Sydney Bridge Upside Down (9 page)

‘I’ve been watching that cloud,’ Dad said. ‘We could be in for some rain, Sandy. Another summer storm, eh?’

‘Could be, Frank,’ said Mr Kelly. ‘Could be.’

I saw Caroline and Sydney Bridge Upside Down turn towards a dune. I saw them go a little way up it.

Then I saw Mr Wiggins’ van move past Sam Phelps and move on till it was near the dune where Caroline and Sydney Bridge Upside Down were. I saw Mr Wiggins leave the van and cross to the bottom of the dune. I saw him looking up at Caroline.

‘Time to load the Reo,’ said Mr Kelly.

I hobbled to the beach with him and Dad. I was damned angry.

T
HE NOISE
of the hooves is so loud that I am running frightened even before I see Sydney Bridge Upside Down galloping through the dusk towards me. The noise gets louder as I run it is as if there are many horses stampeding towards the works trying to get there before I do and the faster I run the further away seem the works and all the time the hooves get closer and I keep taking frightened looks over my shoulder to try to see if it really is only Sydney Bridge Upside Down making all that noise. Until suddenly I am in the works and going up the stairs still running still hearing the hooves (We begin on the ground floor, dear Caroline, because this is where the animals were delivered. Most came in lorries, some came by rail from the wharf, picked up by ships at Port Crummer down the coast. Dad said there was seldom much noise on the ground floor because the animals didn’t know what they were in for when they arrived, and by the time they were downstairs again they were carcasses, ready for the cold chambers
that are now like spooky dungeons. Up on the other floors, the killing-floors, was where you heard the squealing and groaning, where you saw the pools of blood. Even now, when you walk across those concrete floors, you can imagine stains, and some days on the top floor I’ve heard squeals and groans below me and I’ve thought it is not the wind I can hear. Now the wind blows through broken walls, cement chips fall, the stains are sprinkled with cement dust. I stayed up here in the rain one day because I was annoyed at Dad. He had chased me with the whip, and although I knew he soon stopped being angry after these chases I guessed I had better keep out of his way a while longer and too bad for him if I got pneumonia through not being able to shelter. Actually, I could have sheltered in the dungeons, or in the lower-floor killing-rooms, or even down in the yard where there is the furnace they used for burning leftovers, like eyes and ears and hairy bits. The furnace-house is not so easy to hide in because there is only one way of getting in now that the doors are rusted shut; you drop through a hole in the top, down to the black bricks on the floor, and unless you have dangled a rope there is no way of getting out. If you forget the rope and nobody comes along to lower one you could stay in there for ever, and it wouldn’t be much use shouting for help because the brick walls are so thick and the hole at the top is so small. You could die in there. I kidded Dibs into dropping in there once, I said it would be easy for me to reach down and grab his hand if he jumped, but I knew it would not be easy, I knew it would be impossible. So he had to stay in there until I got a rope and it took me an hour to do
that. Dibs said later it was awful waiting for me to get back, he said it seemed much longer than an hour, and even though it was a fine day and he could see the piece of blue sky through the hole he said it was chilly and quiet and creepy in there and he had the feeling he was buried, he said he had felt like shouting but when he tried to shout nothing happened because his voice seemed to have dried up, he said he would never go in there again no matter how often I promised to save him, he said he did not trust me. I told him he should think himself lucky the furnace hadn’t been lit, what say barrows of leftovers had been tipped on him and set alight? Don’t blame me for the bad time you had, I said. Nobody forced you to go in there, I said. Remind me not to drag you out next time, I said. And all he said was there would be no next time, not for him. He said I could get Cal to jump in, see how he liked it. But I wouldn’t frighten Cal like that. I know he’s a pest of a kid sometimes and I shout at him and throw things at him, but I wouldn’t want to scare him to death, it’s better to have a brother than not to have one. I can tell him things even when I don’t care if he hears me or understands what I’m saying. What matters is that I am not on my own and I don’t have to go on thinking and wondering and worrying, I can talk. So I don’t care when he climbs the chute, doing what Dad warns him not to do, he’s a good climber and he won’t fall, he moves like a squirrel. When we get to the top floor I’ll show you where he pops up out of the chute. That’s how he always goes to the top floor, not like me, I always go up the stairs, I reckon the chute would collapse if I went up it too often, though it’s not so bad
going down because you go so fast the chute doesn’t have time to collapse. But don’t you try it, dear Caroline. It’s best to wear pants when you’re whizzing down that. Thick pants. And sandshoes for the braking. I don’t think any girl would want to try it, I can’t imagine Susan Prosser for instance being brave enough to even look down the chute, supposing she was ever brave enough to go to the top floor. One of these days I might ask her to go up there, to test her, to see if she’s brave as well as clever, not that she doesn’t know the works, she knows this place sure enough, I mean in the secret way of people who do more than notice that a place is where it is, they go to it as well, they visit it when they want to be on their own, when they have something special to think about. I followed her in the moonlight the other night. I waited by the side of Dibs’ house for her to leave, I waited there because I still wasn’t sure what she meant about Dibs’ nasty habits and I thought I might clear that up while I was waiting, and when I saw what he did from the veranda in the moonlight I knew what Susan Prosser meant, and it was not long after the dirty dog had done it that I saw Susan going along her side-path and out into the road, and I waited till she was a good way along the road, before I followed her, and this is where she came, she came to the works. But she did not come to this floor or to the ones above or even to the stairs. She sat in the moonlight on the concrete steps at the front, and that was all she did. I watched her from behind the furnace-house. I heard the swamp frogs and, a long way away, the waves that reached the rocks and the funny steps. I didn’t know what Susan Prosser was thinking, she was just sitting there
in the moonlight, staring. I could have called to her. I could have watched her jump and run. I could have chased her. I could have made her so frightened she wouldn’t dare write to my mother. But I didn’t. I just waited in the moonlight and watched her. I hoped she wouldn’t learn from Mrs Kelly, who knows everything, that my mother still isn’t saying how long she reckons on being away. You know, my mother surprised Dad in her latest letter by not even mentioning how much she misses us or how she’s looking forward to seeing us all again soon, not even asking how we’re off for ginger beer, so it seems she is enjoying the city and is in no hurry to end her holiday, though we know she’ll be back for the start of school, mothers are always home then. Of course, Dad doesn’t mind if she stays away another week or two, because he hasn’t started painting the house and I know he wants to have this under way before she gets back. Anyhow, dear Caroline, that was what I was thinking while I watched Susan Prosser sitting in the moonlight on the works steps. Don’t you dare write to my mother, I kept thinking. Then I thought: Please please don’t write to her, Susan, I’ll be your friend if you don’t write, I’ll stick up for you whenever other kids pick on you, I’ll say you are pretty and not skinny and snoopy, I’ll bop anybody who says you’re dippy. And I kept behind her when she went home in the moonlight. I don’t know if following her did me any good. I don’t suppose it did. Because she still worries me) still hearing the hooves still running still going up the stairs and now I know I will never get to the top before Sydney Bridge Upside Down reaches the works. I haven’t been able to go fast enough
Sydney Bridge Upside Down will be right behind me right on top of me at any second now. Now the noise of the hooves stops and there is another noise and the blind is rattling and I think the other noise must be little spurts of thunder another summer storm has come but the other noise can’t be thunder the sounds are sharp and there are too many of them to be thunderclaps I must be awake because I know I am sitting up and I know Cal is lying beside me and I can hear him breathing and I can hear the blind rattling and I am trying to decide what the other noise can be other noises I realise the noise of running feet the noise of a crutch stomping along the passage the noise of a cracking whip, all those noises and the wind rattling the blind now moans round the corner of the house then whines then suddenly screams and I am awake aren’t I because I can hear Cal breathing still hear the blind rattling now the blind stops rattling Cal stops breathing our house is quiet not a sound I can’t be awake I am asleep or dead. Then far away a small sound then I hear the hooves and I am running again and the noise of the hooves is louder Sydney Bridge Upside Down must be near the furnace-house now galloping closer while I try to reach the next floor if I turn I’ll see him but I can’t turn I have to get to the next floor and suddenly I am there I am lying on the floor face in a stain fingers scratching the cement dust choking still hearing the hooves (And this, dear Caroline, is the killing-floor with the interesting room. It must have been the room where they did special things, because it has an iron door with large bolts, strong enough to keep out anybody while they did the cutting-up. It also has a
peep-hole. I found it one day. Well, why make a peep-hole unless what went on in the room was something special? You can imagine all the big killers busy with their knives and sledgehammers, then one of them looks at the others and says he wonders what is happening in the special room today, and how about he takes a peep, and the others tell him to go ahead but to be careful because it’s against the rules to peep, so he strolls over very carefully, makes sure nobody in charge is looking, then he reaches up like this and takes out this brick, then he reaches in like this and takes out another brick—and there! He can look into the room. What does he see? Say he sees a body stretched on a table and a man with a knife bending over it, making fancy twirls with the knife before he sticks it into the body, you can hear him humming as he twirls the knife, chuckling as he sticks it in. Or say he sees something funny, like three killers playing cards with chops and kidneys, having bets and pretending to hide their cards when the others in the game are staring at them, giving nothing away, bluffing like Dad says he used to bluff when he played poker, like the time he won his whip off a stockman who thought Dad must have a great hand, he was sitting so calm and sure, the stockman too scared to have a go at keeping the whip he’d thrown on the table, then losing it because he hadn’t guessed Dad was bluffing. Or say he sees a battle between an angry animal and some killers armed with all sorts of weapons, because this is the room they keep for the animals that won’t give in even after they have been bashed with sledgehammers and stabbed with knives, where any animal that won’t give in is taught a real lesson, by the time it has
been shot at and slashed and whacked in here it wishes it had given in quickly like the other animals, no animal has a chance in here, this is where it must end. Or say he sees something sweet, like the men who are not strong enough to be killers making sausages, long strings of them, hanging them round their necks, making skirts of them, turning them into fancy costumes, dancing and singing in this special part of the killing-floor, maybe the only happy ones in the place. Or say he sees say he sees say he sees) still hearing the hooves scratching in the dust and trying to get up and make for the next lot of stairs because I am sure this is not a safe place I must go higher in the works I must get to the top nobody can get me up there I can hit back from up there I can throw bricks at Sydney Bridge Upside Down from up there teach that mad horse a lesson. Now the noise of the hooves is so loud I tell myself I might as well give in I will never make it to the next lot of stairs. Then I do move an inch or so and I try harder and at last I am moving inch by inch towards the stairs clawing my way through the stains and the dust expecting at any moment to hear the hooves thunder into the works knowing the noise will be much greater then because of the echoes like when I called to Cal through the chute and the Cal-Cal-Cal echoed on the great echo of the hooves might even bring down the walls but I can’t go back now I must get to the top I must get to the next lot of stairs (I fooled the other kids one day last summer, dear Caroline. I came up here and I was puffed that day, like you now. I was tired from running up and down hills. I was the hare in the annual paper chase. Mr Dalloway picked me for hare because he said he’d noticed
I was a good runner, but I think it was because he’d noticed in earlier years that I took my time as a hound and left it to the other hounds to pick up the trail, this year he wanted to be sure I was kept busy. Anyhow, I gave them a good run. I shot up the hill behind the school, ducked through the trees and along the valley to the line of hills up from the houses, and I went along the top for a while, then down again through the trees and along to the high parts up from the wharf, where our caves are, then down the track to the picnic clearing and over the rocks to the beach, along the beach to where the river crosses to the sea, and that was when I reckoned I was due for a rest. I stopped scattering paper and came across here and sat on the top floor and waited. My first idea had been to go along the river-bank as far as the crossing, then head for the school. What I had done instead was to make the trail end at the river. This would puzzle the hounds. They might reckon I had swum across the river to be awkward, and if they tried to pick up the trail on the other side they would be all the more puzzled, they might even begin to wonder if I had been swept out to sea. This would worry Mr Dalloway, sure enough. Anyway, they had given me ten minutes’ head-start and I had wasted no time on the run, so I could have a good rest and check on how they did. I saw three hounds on a hill above the houses, but they were going so slowly I knew they must be stragglers. I didn’t see the leaders until two of them shot out from the clearing and began sniffing along the beach. There was no wind that day, the paper hadn’t shifted from where I’d dropped it. The two leaders were going pretty fast and there were other hounds not far
behind. I couldn’t see Mr Dalloway, he must be rounding up stragglers. What I must decide soon, I thought as I watched the leaders moving along the beach, was when to sneak away from the works and drop more paper. I could keep out of sight of anybody on the dunes by cutting across the paddocks behind the works and then through the trees beside the swamp to the river-bank. I would do this, I thought, when I had seen what happened at the end of the trail. What happened was that the leaders sniffed around so long, trying to pick up the trail, that all the other hounds arrived, even the slowest stragglers. Mr Dalloway arrived too. I saw some of the kids pointing across the river, but it seemed none of them wanted to take the risk of going over, or maybe Mr Dalloway warned them not to try. I waited no longer. I sneaked across the paddocks and through the trees beside the swamp, and when I got to the river-bank I began dropping paper again, and I dropped it all the way back to school. I was at the school maybe twenty minutes before Mr Dalloway and the other kids arrived. Apparently one kid had finally gone far enough along the bank, he had picked up the trail and called to the others. Mr Dalloway was annoyed. How come there was a break in the trail, he wanted to know. I said a sudden breeze must have swept the paper into the river. He said there had been no breeze. I said it might have been a river breeze that had not reached anywhere else. He didn’t believe me. I didn’t care, I’d only done what I had to do. I thought when he called at my home after school next afternoon that he would tell my mother about the paper chase mystery, but she said nothing to me about it later, so I guessed he had