Sydney Bridge Upside Down (6 page)

‘Busy doing what?’

‘Studying.’

‘In the holidays?’

‘People don’t stop studying merely because of the holidays. Some people.’

‘Why? What’s wrong with leaving it till school starts again?’

She moved back from the fence. ‘I don’t believe you’d understand. You’re not studious.’

‘I do all right at school,’ I said. ‘Even if I’m not one of Mr Dalloway’s pets.’

‘I don’t study because of Mr Dalloway,’ she said. ‘I study
for my own sake. Some day I’ll leave Calliope Bay. I want to know how to do something when I get somewhere else. I won’t know unless I’m properly educated. Do you understand?’

‘Sure I do,’ I said. Best to stay friendly. ‘I didn’t mean
you
were one of Mr Dalloway’s pets.’

‘It wouldn’t matter to me if you did,’ she said. ‘Not that it would help me to be one of his pets.’

‘I think he likes you, Susan,’ I said.

‘That scarcely matters now, does it?’ she said. When she saw that I didn’t understand, she added: ‘You do know he won’t be coming back next term?’

‘Gosh!’ I said. ‘I never heard that!’

‘It’s true,’ she said.

‘How do you know?’ I said, not believing her.

‘I merely happen to know,’ she said with a look that was obviously meant to show how sorry she felt for a kid who could not believe his teacher had left for ever.

‘Who told you?’ I asked.

‘You don’t
have
to believe me,’ she said. ‘Oh, I can’t stay here chatting. I have some studying to do.’

I watched her go inside. I don’t like her now, I thought. Why is she so nosy? Why does she make up fibs about Mr Dalloway? Who cares if she studies during the holidays? Who cares about her stupid budgie, anyway?

I went to the end of the yard and looked for Cal. I couldn’t see him. That was another bop I owed him. I went back to the kitchen.

The water in the sink had cooled. I didn’t care. I sloshed the dishes quickly, then dried them, using the tea-towel
to get rid of the parts still greasy.

I had wondered if Caroline would hear the rattle of the dishes and come out and insist on helping. Evidently she hadn’t. Better get on with the sweeping. I would do the kitchen first, then the passage, then our room, then maybe I would go into Caroline’s room—

Should I go to her room first? After looking so long at Susan Prosser, I wouldn’t mind looking at Caroline. It would be a nice change.

I forced myself to keep to the first plan. I swept the kitchen quickly, then began on the passage.

‘Harry!’ called Caroline.

I dropped the broom and sped up the passage. I stopped in her doorway.

She was sitting up in bed. The sheet had slipped. After a moment or so I noticed that she looked more beautiful than ever.

‘I’ve been dreaming, Harry,’ she said. ‘How long have I been asleep?’

‘Only an hour,’ I said. ‘It’s all right. There’s no housework to do. We don’t want you doing housework while you’re on holiday.’

She yawned and stretched her arms above her head. Then she said: ‘Pull up the blind, Harry dear. Seems it’s another sunny day.’

‘Yes, it is,’ I said. I kept my back to her while I was at the window. The road was clear, it usually was. I heard her bed creaking, but I made myself look at the road.

‘Think I’ll wear this today,’ she said. ‘Do you like this dress, Harry?’

So of course I had to turn round. She was by the corner wardrobe, holding up a flowery orange-and-green dress.

‘It looks good,’ I said.

‘I’ll wear this one today,’ she said.

She put on the dress. It was all she did put on, though I figured she would probably put on other clothes when I wasn’t there.

‘Cal’s gone to the swamp,’ I said. ‘Shall we go and see if he’s caught any frogs?’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘A quick wash, then I’ll put on some lipstick. In case we meet anybody.’ She smiled at me. ‘Do you prefer girls to wear lipstick, Harry?’

She moved towards me and I had a good idea what she would do. ‘I like lipstick,’ I got in before she kissed me. It was a small kiss.

‘There,’ she said after it. ‘Good morning again, Harry.’

She ran to the bathroom while I was taking a deep breath. I went to the kitchen and checked that there were still ten bottles of ginger beer in the sink cupboard. Should I offer her one? Or should I wait till we got back from the walk?

Dibs Kelly turned up just then, so that settled it. I would not mention the ginger beer.

I had not seen Dibs since I’d chased him by the railway line yesterday, but he didn’t look as if he remembered how angry I had been, he looked friendly, ready for fun. He was grinning.

‘I got something for the cave,’ he said. He brought a square biscuit tin from behind his back. ‘How about this?’

‘What do we want a tin for?’ I asked.

‘Not only a tin,’ he said. He took off the lid, showed me what was inside—a small paraffin lamp, glass funnel and all.

‘Hey, that’s good,’ I said. ‘Where did you get that? Did you pinch it?’

‘Dad gave it to me,’ Dibs said. ‘Too small for him, he reckons. So we can use it to light the back of the cave, eh?’

‘Be all right for night-time,’ I said. ‘We can use the cave at night.’ I thought about it. ‘If I can dodge Dad,’ I said. ‘Or if he’s away some night and there’s only Cal and me at home.’ I recalled there were nights, once every month or so, when Dad and Mr Kelly drove in the Reo to Bonnie Brae, to smoke concerts or something. We could go to the cave on one of those nights. Good old Dibs!

‘Coming up then?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to leave this at our house. One of the kids will find it and bust it.’

‘We’ll go up there this morning,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if Caroline wants to come.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Dibs said. He ran his tongue over his lips, but I ignored that.

I had heard Caroline going from the bathroom to her room and I guessed she would have had time to put on the lipstick and anything else she wanted to put on. Sure enough, when I reached her room she was just turning from the dressing-table mirror. She had lipstick on. She was also wearing a pair of brown flat-heeled shoes.

‘What say we leave the swamp till another time?’ I said. ‘Would you like to see a cave today?’

‘Is it far, Harry?’ asked Caroline.

‘Not far,’ I said. ‘No further than the wharf, going round the back way. It’s not a very steep track. It won’t make you tired, Caroline. And you can see the wharf and the bay from up there.’

‘That sounds nice,’ she said. ‘We might even have time to call on Mr Phelps, do you think?’

‘Well, he’s usually busy about now,’ I said. ‘He stores things in the woolshed for farmers. They have different days for collecting stuff. He keeps things there for the store too—’

‘Anyway, we’ll have a nice walk,’ Caroline said.

Dibs was waiting for us in the kitchen. If he expected Caroline to kiss him, he fell in; all she did was give him a smile. She didn’t care who she smiled at.

I looked down the yard as we left in case Cal was there; he wasn’t. Served him right that he was missing this fun, he shouldn’t have dodged wiping the breakfast dishes.

I saw Susan Prosser on her front veranda when we were up on the road, but pretended I hadn’t seen her. She couldn’t be studying very hard. Unless the book in her hand was a textbook.

‘You know what Susan Prosser reckons?’ I said to Dibs when we were down the road a bit. ‘She reckons Mr Dalloway won’t be here next term.’

Caroline, who was walking between us, gave me a look when I said Mr Dalloway’s name, but she did not speak.

‘Susan Prosser doesn’t know,’ Dibs said.

‘She’s dippy,’ I said. ‘She makes up things.’

‘Mr Dalloway would have told us,’ Dibs said. ‘He wouldn’t tell her and not tell us.’

‘She says she stays inside because she’s studying,’ I said. I glanced at Caroline, but she was looking at the works—or maybe the railway line.

‘Susan Prosser is like her mother,’ Dibs said.

‘That’s what I reckon,’ I said. ‘Heck, who wants to study in the holidays?’

Dibs made a disgusted noise. He couldn’t be bothered with Susan Prosser.

I went on thinking about her for a few moments, mainly because I was still puzzled at the back of my mind about her and Mr Wiggins driving off in the van the other day, but also because I had not liked the way she snooped this morning, asking questions about our running around in the house, wanting to know why Caroline hadn’t helped with the dishes. Susan Prosser had better watch out, I thought.

Caroline stopped when Dibs turned from the road towards the hill track.

‘This is the way we go,’ I told her. ‘It’s not very steep.’

‘Can’t we go on the line?’ she asked.

‘There’s a track to the cave further along,’ I said. ‘But it’s much steeper than this one. You’d get very puffed, Caroline.’

‘That settles it then,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’ll follow Dibs.’

‘I’ll catch you if you slip,’ I said.

‘Dear Harry,’ she said. I was probably close to getting another kiss, but she must have decided to save it for me. She followed Dibs.

Just before we went over the first rise, I looked back at the houses. Susan Prosser was still on her front veranda,
she seemed to be looking up at us. I could not see Cal. We went over the rise. Now we couldn’t be seen from the houses.

It didn’t take us long to reach the cave, even though Caroline made us stop a few times so that she could look across the bay. She seemed to screw up her eyes to look, then she said how blue the bay was, she said what a wonderfully sunny day it was, she said she could not see much of the wharf. I told her we’d take her to where she could get a good view of the wharf—after we had been to the cave.

She liked the cave. She did not hang back and say it was scary, as I was sure a girl like Susan Prosser would have.

‘And what do you boys do in here?’ asked Caroline. She sat down, not far in from the cave mouth.

‘We have a good talk,’ I said, sitting opposite Caroline.

‘And what else?’ she asked. She was partly shadowed, but the light from the cave mouth fell across her legs.

I hesitated, then decided it was safe to tell her about the cigarettes. ‘Sometimes we have a smoke,’ I said, watching her legs.

She laughed. ‘That must be exciting.’

‘Don’t think we’ve got any today,’ I said. ‘How’s the fag supply, Dibs?’

‘We’ve run out,’ said Dibs.

‘Just as well I don’t smoke,’ said Caroline.

‘My mother smokes a lot,’ I said. ‘But I don’t take her cigarettes. I like the ones Dibs makes.’

‘Perhaps I could try one next time you have some,’ Caroline said. ‘Would you let me try one, Dibs?’

‘Sure I will,’ said Dibs. He had taken the lamp from
the tin, had stood it near the fireplace. ‘I should have got some paraffin for this thing. How about we go down and get some?’

‘Let’s sit here a while,’ said Caroline. ‘Isn’t it lovely and secret in here?’

‘It’s good,’ I said. ‘This is where we waited for the
Emma Cranwell.
The day you arrived.’

‘What a wonderful idea!’ she said. ‘And what do you boys discuss when you have a good talk in here?’

‘Different things,’ I said, noticing Caroline draw up her legs. Her legs were now out of the light. I was used to the darkness, though. I could see that she had her chin on her knees, that she had let her dress fall back from her knees, that she was gazing across the cave at me.

‘One time we talked about getting some gun-powder and blowing up the works,’ Dibs said. ‘We could hide the gun-powder here until it was dark, then go down and blow up the works. That was one thing we talked about, eh, Harry?’

‘Yes,’ I said, deciding Dibs had not really given away a secret because we weren’t sure we should blow up the works, they were so good for playing in.

Caroline straightened one leg. ‘Where would you get the gun-powder?’

‘My brother Buster could get it for me,’ Dibs said. ‘He works in a quarry. He uses a lot of gun-powder.’

‘Would he mind if you blew up the works?’ asked Caroline. ‘Think of the explosion!’ She straightened the other leg, but did not bother to straighten her dress.

‘Buster wouldn’t care if there was a big explosion,’ Dibs
said. ‘Buster likes big explosions and going fast on his Indian and everything like that.’

‘He must find Calliope Bay very quiet,’ Caroline said.

‘That’s why he goes away a lot,’ Dibs said.

‘Do you think it’s too quiet?’ I asked Caroline. Should I move closer to her? Could she tell I was staring at her knees?

‘I like a quiet holiday,’ she said. ‘I like this holiday, Harry.’

‘I can show you a lot of other places,’ I said, sliding across the cave. ‘You haven’t seen the waterfall yet, Caroline.’

‘I’m looking forward to the waterfall,’ she said.

‘Harry, can I tell Caroline about the pistol?’ asked Dibs.

‘What?’ I said. That was the moment when the light in the cave seemed to change and I saw more of Caroline and was certain she wore only the dress, the shoes, the lipstick. I looked into a blacker part of the cave.

‘Can I tell her about the pistol?’ asked Dibs.

‘Tell me about the pistol,’ Caroline said.

‘No,’ I said, realising what Dibs had said. It could be dangerous, I thought. ‘No, we haven’t got the pistol now,’ I told Caroline. ‘We found a pistol, but we threw it away. We knew we couldn’t keep it. So we threw it away, that’s what we did.’

‘That’s right,’ Dibs said. ‘I remember now.’

‘So you can’t show it to me?’ said Caroline.

‘We threw it away,’ I told her.

‘What a shame,’ she said. ‘I’d like to see a pistol.’

‘We’ll show you the next one we find,’ I said. It was too
warm near her now, I must leave the cave. I said: ‘Would you like to see the view from the cliff-top, Caroline?’

‘Mmm,’ she said.

She followed me from the cave, then went ahead, straightening her dress as she went.

Dibs, who was last out, nudged me and nodded towards Caroline, grinning. I took no notice of him. He had better not say anything cheeky about my cousin, I would fix him if he did.

On the cliff-top overlooking the wharf, Caroline got excited because she could see Sam Phelps and Sydney Bridge Upside Down. She seemed to have to stare hard to see such a short distance.