The Ghost by the Billabong

by Jackie French

  She was not surprised that the clothes were the right size. She was surprised that, while none were clothes she would have chosen, she loved them all except, perhaps, the nightdresses. She had always worn pyjamas and, when they were left behind, a T-shirt to bed.

  Perhaps nightdresses were comfortable too.

  ‘Do you like them?’ Matilda Thompson seemed to really want to know the answer.

  ‘I love them. I can’t thank you enough.’

  ‘I do like clothes,’ she said lightly. ‘So does my friend, Mrs Lee.’ Jed had an image of the two old women — surely a friend of Matilda Thompson must be old too — discussing what clothes Jed needed over the phone, then the car bringing them straight out here. Forty-five minutes and uncounted dollars, and suddenly she had clothes again.

  ‘Don’t forget your account at the bookshop,’ Matilda Thompson added. ‘They can replace whatever you’ve lost. Ring them up and they’ll deliver whatever you want.’

  Jed nodded, dumbly. This was what she had dreamed of. More than she had dreamed of. Her own room. Unlimited books. Quiet comfort. Good people. Kindness. ‘Thank you, Mrs Thompson . . . I . . . I have to tell you something.’ She clenched her hands together. ‘I really don’t know if I’m Tommy’s great-granddaughter or not. I might be. I really hope I am. Not . . . not because of the money now, or all this . . .’ she waved at the polished wood, the Persian carpet in the room ‘. . . but because I love him.’

  She waited for the Dragon to reappear. Instead the old woman smiled at her. ‘I love him too. And you have been his great-granddaughter, my dear, no matter what the blood relationship turns out to be. Blood matters, of course. It matters a lot. Any breeder of sheep or horses will tell you that. But sometimes family is where you find it too.’

  Matilda Thompson nodded at the clothes on the bed. ‘Tommy is keeping himself awake to listen to your story. Best be quick. He needs his rest.’ She smiled at Jed — a smile of comfort, the first Jed had ever seen her give. ‘Sergeant Harrison will be along later to hear your story. But the police already have the man’s description and know about his kombi van. Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you all the time.’

  It was strange how much comfort it could be, when a dragon told you that.

  Chapter 64

  FRED

  22 JULY 1969

  He’d seen the kombi van at the campground by the river twice before. Not the billabong — there were bumps along that track that would make a city driver wary of busting a sump. The campground, though, had a rubbish bin put in by the council, and long-drop toilets courtesy of the Gibber’s Creek Progress Association and sometimes they were even cleaned, and a signpost donated by the local Lions Club. Families picnicked there on their way to somewhere else. In summer other families sometimes camped there, the kids swimming in the river, the adults fishing further down in the big pools.

  Each time this bloke had driven in he’d used the toilet and then washed his hands and face in the river, then washed two Eskies — not inside them, just the outside, drying them with care and almost love.

  A bit weird, that, but nothing to get excited about. Fred just didn’t like this bloke’s face. Reminded him of Big Bob, in the war, who only showed emotion when someone got hurt or killed — either side, it didn’t matter — as if he needed more and more violence each time to feel anything at all.

  Big Bob had found all he needed up in New Guinea, till a sniper’s bullet had finally got him, still with a smile on his face, the blokes said, like death was finally enough to make him feel a bit of life. Fred reckoned there were two kinds of living ghosts, the good kind, like him, who felt too much and had to stand back or they’d get overwhelmed, and the bad kind, like Big Bob.

  And maybe this bloke too. It all made him glad the kombi parked there, and not at the billabong he thought of as his own.

  But today Fred had been up on the hill at Mrs Genarrio’s when he’d seen the kombi screech to a halt in a shower of dust and gravel. Like Mrs M, old Mrs Genarrio was generous to a bloke who chopped her wood and did odd jobs for her and, even better, had too little English to go gossiping about him. Her spag bol was grouse too, and the almond biscuits with icing sugar on them.

  He’d recognised Jed as soon as she’d spilled out of the door and thrust herself through the fence too. Only one reason for a girl like Jed to run like that. He’d been about to run to her out of the trees — not that the way he moved could be called running these days: hobbling more like it — when the ute had pulled up and the kombi had sped off.

  Jed was safe. But if he was right about what kind of bloke was driving the kombi, and having put the clues together, he had a feeling other girls might not be.

  He’d guessed the bloke would head to the campground. Every time he’d seen Jed she’d had a shoulder bag: this time she must have left it in the car. The bloke would want to get rid of it pronto.

  Fred had limped down there as fast as he could, taking the shortcut cross-country, staying behind the timber as much as possible, standing still if a car passed when it was not. Most people thought they saw everything around them but, mostly, all they saw was what they expected to see and what moved. Stand still and most times no one saw you at all.

  The kombi was there. Even as he approached he saw the driver carrying a swag into the long drop.

  Jed Kelly’s swag. And no one would look for it in a long-drop toilet. Once that hole was full, the Progress Association just dug a new one, moved the dunny shed over and filled the last bit in with wood ash then dirt.

  But they might be looking for a kombi van.

  Fred stood in the tree shadows. If Jed threw herself out of the kombi van like that, sure as eggs this bloke had been ready to hurt her, or kill her. Had the bloke in the ute seen enough to identify the creep too? Even if Jed could tell the police what this bloke looked like, would they catch him if he drove down to Victoria, say, or over to Western Australia? Easy enough to ditch the van, or even change the number plates. How many other girls would this man attack before someone stopped him?

  Fred grinned. When most people said ‘someone should’ they meant someone else, not them. Not Fred. Someone needed to stop this man. Ghost or not, Fred was someone. Question was, how?

  When he was younger he might have tried a bit of dirty fighting, enough to get the bloke tied up, then called the coppers to sort it out while he skedaddled. Fred wasn’t sure he could manage that now. But he could slash the bloke’s tyres and get Mrs G to call the cops. He put his hand in his pocket for his knife, then stopped.

  The man came out, now wearing grey flannel pants and a tweed jacket, washed his face and hands carefully in the river, then walked back to the van and took a briefcase out of one of the sacks. For a moment he looked at the two Eskies, an expression almost like love on his face. Then he walked away, leaving the kombi unlocked behind him.

  It took Fred a few seconds to realise what he was doing. That track led to Gibber’s Creek. Two hours’ walk and he’d be in town; could head to the railway station and be away before anyone could link him to the van, to Jed. Because the police would be looking for a man in a shiny suit and a kombi van, but who would notice yet another train traveller? This bloke might have half a dozen identities he could slip on and off . . .

  Fred moved out of the trees. He grabbed the first Esky and opened the lid.

  A girl’s head stared at him. Or what had once been a girl, the eyes sunken in the puffed dead flesh.

  He’d seen some crook things in his life, but not like this. He shoved the lid on roughly as nausea grabbed him . . .

  As hands grabbed him. Strong hands of a bloke in a tweed jacket.

  A long and eventful life had taught Fred to move and think at the same time. Already he had sagged as the hands grabbed him, then rolled as the hands automatically let go. He sprang to his feet, except when you’d been through what Fred had you didn’t spring, you staggered, as the bloke reached into the back of his trousers and drew out a knife. He looked, very faintly
, happy, as if this were real enough for him to feel emotion.

  Hunting knife. A big one. Fred had his pocket knife, but nothing larger, because when you were a travelling man the cops could pick you up and if you had a big knife they’d throw the book at you, pin any unsolved crime they could on your back. But a bloke with just a pocket knife was harmless.

  Unless he’d learned some dirty fighting in the back streets of Melbourne as a kid. But that had been a lifetime ago. Several lifetimes: his own and those of all the other men he had pretended to be.

  Was it time for him to die now? He didn’t know.

  He stepped back, letting the bloke think he was afraid. That way, when the big knife flashed down, Fred could sidestep, trip him, land on top, get the knife from his hand before the other had time to grasp it firmly once again, then slash it down. Or just snatch the knife in one sudden move . . .

  And suddenly he had the big knife in his own hands, but, before he could move back (curse the slowness of old age!) the other man grabbed Fred’s arm with one strong hand — one young, strong hand, an arm that had never been shattered by Japanese bullets — and forced Fred’s hand to yield the knife back to him again. Fred felt its coldness slice into his body.

  Fred gave a gurgle and opened his eyes wide. A death gurgle, except he wasn’t dead; and as the attacker straightened, thinking he was safe, Fred lunged again. Hand around the neck in a grip he’d learned on those Melbourne streets, not the few weeks’ training he’d got in the war. One twist was all it took, if it was the right twist.

  It was.

  The murderer fell.

  He should feel something. Hell, he’d killed a bloke. But all he felt was cold, and fear the bloke wasn’t dead at all, might try to kill someone else just as he’d tried to kill Fred, and like he had killed that girl in the Esky, had almost certainly killed many times before, with that look of faint enjoyment in his eyes. Fred checked he was dead; then he looked at the big knife, still in his body; considered a moment, and pulled it out, automatically pushing one hand against his wound to staunch some of the flow of blood.

  The pain was too great to feel, but he did feel cold, and weak, so that it took all his focus to pull out his hanky and wipe the knife free of his fingerprints. The police weren’t likely to match these against a record decades old. But still. He’d been a ghost successfully for too long to risk messing it up for Mah now.

  No girl would be hurt ever again, not by the corpse curled at his feet, almost as if he were asleep, strangely smaller than he had been alive. Almost, even, like the child he had once been. Were monsters born, or made?

  This was not the time to think of that. Fred lifted his hand slightly from his own wound. Bright red blood and far too much of it.

  Yes, this was time for him to die.

  But it had been that time once before, and he was still there. Unless he really was a ghost and just now Fred wasn’t sure whether that mightn’t be the case either.

  What he did know was that he had to get away, because one thing worse for Mah and her nippers than finding out that their dead hero brother and uncle was alive was that he’d killed a bloke. He’d lived his life carefully not hurting Mah. He wasn’t going to stop protecting her now, just for a little thing like death. He’d died once, anyway. How hard could a second death be?

  He pulled off his shirt, made a pad out of it, and held it hard against his wound so he would leave no trail of blood. He walked slowly, carefully, on the sides of his boots so as to leave no tracks either, into the trees, the shadows, their green light melding as the light began to fade for him.

  A treecreeper shrilled, darting up the tree trunk beside him. Fred smiled.

  Yes, it was time to die.

  Chapter 65

  JED

  It was strange how easy it was to be looked after. A phone conversation with the police, not hard at all, a sergeant with a kind face coming out to Drinkwater — no way was the great-granddaughter of Tommy Thompson expected to come into the police station — asking her what the man had looked like, what she remembered of the kombi’s number plate. Matilda Thompson was with her in the sitting room the whole time, a strange dragonly comfort.

  Sitting with Tommy, her tanned hand in his blue-veined one, telling him everything about the tracking station, even things she had already told him in her letters, from the huge boulders that looked like giants had thrown them down and that were now part of the tracking-station gardens, to what she could remember and understand of the computer systems: ‘CP1 and CP2 systems are both the same, they’re the ones that process the spacecraft command and telemetry data.’

  ‘So the software for them is identical too?’ That whisper of a voice, the sharp brain behind it. She wondered what else Australia could have achieved if this man had had life enough to work on the space program. Mars by next year? Mining the asteroids?

  ‘I think so. There’s something called an Expanded Memory Unit, or EMU. It expands each computer’s memory capacity to sixty-four thousand words. It seems incredible, doesn’t it? All that memory?’

  ‘One day we will have . . . an even vaster computer. Everyone will be able . . . to use it with a console . . . in their house or office.’

  She smiled. ‘Just like in the sci-fi books. You have to dream things to create them.’

  ‘Ha! I dreamed . . . my own inventions . . . with no books . . .’ He broke off as Anita brought in the tea tray, Matilda Thompson behind her smiling, miraculously, the same smile for both her and Tommy. Three cups on the tray, sponge cake oozing jam and cream, cake forks, which she had realised were to keep the jam and cream from your fingers so you didn’t lick them.

  Matilda Thompson held Tommy’s teacup to his lips, her other hand lifting his oxygen mask. ‘I’ve asked your young man to dinner.’

  ‘Nicholas?’

  ‘You have another one?’

  ‘No. Of course not. Thank you.’ Jed had planned to ask Nancy to drive her to River View the next day.

  ‘And your young friend is coming to breakfast. Scarlett O’Hara, if that’s still her name now.’

  ‘I think she’s sticking with Scarlett.’ Jed realised with a pang how much she had missed the kid.

  Matilda Thompson grinned. Jed hadn’t known that dragons could grin. ‘She rang half an hour ago — news travels fast around here — and invited herself. In her own words, “Tell Jed I can use a spoon now.” She also informed me not to worry, she wouldn’t spill anything on the carpet.’

  ‘She is a darling. She’s got guts too.’ Jed shrugged. ‘Or maybe she’s had no choice but to be brave.’

  ‘Of course she has had choices, just as you have had. Moira tells me that it’s taken months for that child to manage a spoon. Hour after hour, day after day.’ Matilda Thompson broke off a crumb of sponge cake and lifted it to Tommy’s lips. ‘It will be interesting to see what happens to the child in the next ten or twenty years.’ The Dragon spoke as if she had no doubt that she would still be alive to see it.

  ‘I think she’s going to be a doctor.’

  ‘Really?’ Matilda Thompson made no other comment. ‘Why don’t you go and titivate yourself before your young man arrives? Tommy needs a nap.’

  And you need time with him, thought Jed. ‘What does titivate mean?’

  ‘You can work it out. Go.’

  Jed went.

  Chapter 66

  JED

  Titivate. A lovely word. Jed sat at the dressing table with its mirror showing her from the front and sides. There were a silver-backed hairbrush and silver-embossed comb; face powder that she’d never used; a lipstick in a pale shade Matilda Thompson must consider suitable for girls her age; and, of all things, an eyebrow pencil. Matilda Thompson never wore eyeliner, though Jed had noticed she plucked her eyebrows. But here was an eyebrow pencil, just like the one in her lost swag. And some wide ribbons that matched the dresses . . .

  Matilda Thompson was genuinely making her welcome.

  She drew the brush through her hair
, pulled it back from her face with one of the ribbons, tying it behind, used the eyebrow pencil on her brows and eyelids, added a slight touch of the powder and some lipstick too.

  She looked . . . pretty. Like someone who might be Tommy Thompson’s great-granddaughter. But if there had been more news about that, surely Matilda would have told her.

  Perhaps the Dragon had decided that so far she had been harmless, that she had even given Tommy pleasure and, with so little of his time left, Jed was welcome because she gave him more than the small world of his bedroom.

  So little time. It wasn’t fair! Great-granddaughter or not, she wanted to get to know him more. Listen to the stories of the 1890s. What had he invented in World War I that had made his fortune — or at least made it a bigger one? How did you even let the government know you had an invention they could use?

  So much life and so few days. Or weeks, surely they had weeks, or even months . . .

  A car pulled up outside. She looked out the window and saw Nancy’s car, and Nancy herself, looking like she’d swallowed a super-sized basketball, hauling Nicholas’s wheelchair out of the back.

  She took one final look at herself in the mirror, and ran down the stairs. By the time she arrived on the driveway, Nancy had disappeared and Nicholas was out of the car and sitting in his chair.

  ‘Nicholas!’ She ran towards him, then stopped, remembering he couldn’t stand to kiss her, even if he had wanted to. She stooped and kissed him, felt his hands warm on her arms, keeping her down, his lips kissing her back, just as she had dreamed of so often.