The Ghost by the Billabong

By Jackie French

The fifth title in the sweeping Matilda Saga

Hippies wear beads, demonstrators march against the Vietnam War, and the world waits to see the first human steps on the moon's surface.

But at Gibbers Creek, Jed Kelly sees ghosts, from the past and future, at the Drinkwater billabong where long ago the swaggie leaped to his defiant death.

But is seventeen-year-old Jed a con artist or a survivor? When she turns up at Drinkwater Station claiming to be the great-granddaughter of Matilda Thompson's dying husband, Jed clearly has secrets. As does a veteran called Nicholas, who was badly wounded in the Vietnam War and now must try to create a life he truly wants to live, despite the ghosts that haunt him too.

Set during the turbulence of the late 1960s, this was a time when brilliant and little-known endeavours saw Australia play a vital role in Neil Armstrong's 'one giant leap for mankind' on that first unforgettable moon walk.

The fifth title in the highly acclaimed Matilda Saga, The Ghost by the Billabong is a story of deep conflicts and enduring passions - for other people, for the land, and for the future of humanity.

PRAISE FOR THE MATILDA SAGA

'An engrossing mystery story, an ode to strong women, and a moving exploration of the private wounds we carry ... The Last Dingo Summer is a must for your summer reading list' - Better Reading

'The perfect read for anyone who loves immersing themselves in Australian fiction. Gripping, emotional and moving, Facing the Flame is a great book to curl up with on a warm spring night' - New Idea

'Highly recommended ... this was a complete binge, read in one night because it was just too good and too gripping to put down ... a cracking story filled with rich characters both old and new and imbued with all that we hold dear about Australian love of country and mateship' - ReadPlus

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Dec 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781743095799

Jackie French

Jackie French AM is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator, the 2014–2015 Australian Children's Laureate and the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. In 2016 Jackie became a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution to children's literature and her advocacy for youth literacy. She is regarded as one of Australia's most popular children's authors and writes across all genres — from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi to her much loved historical fiction for a variety of age groups. ‘A book can change a child's life. A book can change the world' was the primary philosophy behind Jackie's two-year term as Laureate. jackiefrench.com facebook.com/authorjackiefrench

Book preview

Chapter 1

THE GHOST BY THE BILLABONG

5 DECEMBER 1968

Lightning slashed a purple sky. Rain swept closer, in grey flurries across the paddocks, like lacy wind-blown curtains.

Jed stared down the road. No cars. No chance of a lift before the rain hit hard. Just sheep like rocks, and rocks like sheep. And gum trees. Gum trees, gum trees, gum trees, lining a dirt track down to the river. Every gum tree looked the same, and so did every sheep.

Night was already swallowing what was left of the day, darkened further by the storm. Drinkwater homestead was an hour’s walk away. She’d planned to arrive there at dusk so the Thompsons would have to ask her to dinner. Then they’d have to invite her to stay the night. Once she’d manoeuvred the old folk into giving her a bed, she’d be halfway there.

The lightning danced across the river. The ground vibrated as thunder answered it. This was not a storm to be out in. Time for a new plan. The last car had passed half an hour back: a woman with kids in the back, who’d ignored Jed’s outstretched thumb, even though she wore a loose T-shirt to hide The Beasts. The Beasts had got her into enough trouble already. Women’s libbers who burned their bras mustn’t have breasts that bounced if you ran and gave out the wrong messages entirely. Blokes wolf-whistling every time you passed a building site or pub wasn’t the half of it.

Damn The Beasts and damn this storm. Damn her hunger too, which slowed her brain and made each step an effort.

She had to think! Plan! Even if a car did come, drivers didn’t pick up hitchhikers in the rain, not and get their nice seats wet.

She glanced around, hoping for a house, even a shed. But there were only those gums on one side, sheep on the other, ignoring her, heads down, backs to the advancing rain.

‘All right for you,’ she told them. Lucky sheep, in waterproof wool. Jed wished she could live on grass too. Or photosynthesise. Eating was fun. Finding food wasn’t.

Hunger bit again, so sharp that the world shimmered. But she had a packet of biscuits in her shoulder bag, kept for an emergency like this. Drinkwater was her last chance. She had to arrive there clear headed.

She looked at the track down to the river. The trees along the river were thicker, but trees provided only an illusion of shelter. Once trees dripped, you got as wet as if you sat out in a paddock. Was she more likely to be hit by lightning out here, or under a tall tree?

A light suddenly flickered down the track. Lightning? No, the light was still there. A house!

A house meant shelter. Even if the owners didn’t let an unknown girl with a black eye, a shoulder bag and the grime of three days and nights of travelling on her face, hands and clothes into their home — and who could blame them — she could press herself against a wall, under the eaves. She’d be mostly dry, and more importantly, safe from lightning bolts.

She jogged down the track, ignoring hunger and the pain in her shoulder. You couldn’t ignore being struck by lightning — or maybe you could, because you’d be dead. The thunder rumbled towards her, louder than a semi-trailer. Hail stung her cheek as she reached the clearing.

She stopped, disappointment as bitter as the smell of Merv’s stale beer.

No house. Not even a hut. Only a fire in a strange teepee shape, licking at the logs of wood above it. Next to the fire a sheet of canvas slanted between two trees, making both roof and wall. Water: the still mirror of a billabong, speckled with raindrop circles, not the river which must be further down the track. A gnome-like man, grinning at her, all yellow teeth and wrinkles. An almost golden glow on the horizon, as the last sunlight pierced the clouds beyond.

And the smell of sausages.

She’d have run back to the road, where someone might see if the man attacked her, if it hadn’t been for the sausages.

How long since she had eaten? Didn’t know. Didn’t want to know, or she might eat the biscuits now, gulping them down, instead of leaving them till the morning so she could meet the Thompsons with a clear brain and hands that didn’t tremble . . .

The sausages sizzled above the flames. Oh, wow. Big, fatty sausages . . .

The gnome nodded at her. ‘Better get under the shelter. I won’t hurt you, girlie.’ The firelight showed gaps in his grin. Suddenly, and for no reason at all, she liked him, maybe because he looked at her face, and not The Beasts. ‘Can’t hurt you, anyway,’ he added. ‘I’m a ghost.’

Jed took a cautious step forwards as a gust of hail turned her shoulders to ice. ‘Ghosts don’t cook sausages.’

‘No,’ he corrected. ‘Ghosts don’t eat sausages. These are for you.’

Which was just crazy enough for her to stumble forwards, under the canvas, as the first sheet of rain hit, the hail rattling on the canvas like tiny fists.

The man — or ghost — smelled of old campfires and gum leaves, but he had angled the canvas so the rain hit it, not them, and it blocked the wind too. And maybe what she was smelling was the clearing, not him at all . . .

No, he wasn’t a ghost. Jed knew what ghosts looked like. But on the other hand, she thought dazedly, maybe there were types of ghosts she hadn’t seen. Even ghosts who cooked sausages.

She hugged her knees and looked at the fire still burning under its canopy of logs, at the sausages, threaded on a long stick, nicely blackened, split in spots and oozing juice.

The ghost held the stick out to her. ‘Careful, they’re hot.’

‘No tomato sauce?’

The ghost’s grin widened. ‘Don’t push your luck, girlie. You want them sausages or not?’

Jed nodded. She pulled one off the stick, ignoring the heat on her fingers, bit into it, felt the lovely juice, tasted the glorious meatiness and forced herself not to gulp it down. Another bite, and another. Her mind steadied, and her hands, as if her body knew that food had arrived, even if it hadn’t processed it yet.

‘You’re not having one?’ she asked, the last bite swallowed.

‘Told you. They’re all for you.’

She ate the next sausage more slowly. By the fourth, and last, her body had relaxed out of the ‘must find food’ urgency that had made her jittery all day.

Darkness sat firmly on the campsite now. Lightning blazed a more-than-daylight flash across the billabong, then was gone. The rain turned solid. Gold light, trees and billabong vanished. The world was only the dryness of the canvas and the heat it reflected from the fire so that both sides of her were warm. Warmth and food . . .

She threw the greasy stick onto the blaze. She glanced at the ghost, and found him still grinning at her. His remaining teeth were worn right down, brown at the tops. ‘Gunna poke me with your finger?’

‘Why?’

‘To see if I’m solid.’

Jed shrugged. ‘If you can hold a stick of sausages, you’re solid enough.’

‘Makes sense. I really am a ghost, you know. Official. I died and everything.’

A year of surviving on the streets — or better yet, under a bridge or sleeping in a railway waiting room — had taught Jed never to be alone with a man. You weren’t alone hitchhiking in a car or truck, not if there were other cars on the road if you were prepared to rip the upholstery or break the windscreen with the fruit knife she always carried with her — you could do many, many things with a fruit knife — if the driver tried to take you down a side road or refused to stop. But for some reason she felt no fear now. ‘When did you die?’

‘Up in New Guinea in 1942.’

World War II, she thought. ‘Why are you here then? Did you live around here?’ Perhaps the ruins of his hut were nearby. If he were a ghost, which she still doubted — though nor did she think he was lying, precisely.

‘Never lived anywhere for long, except in an orphanage in Melbourne when I was small. Wouldn’t go back to that place for quids. I reckon when you die you come back to what you loved.’

‘You loved this billabong?’ The rain curtain shifted, leaving drops as light as cobwebs on the edge of the tarpaulin. Suddenly the firelight and the rags of dusk showed beauty: white trunks of trees, like ghosts themselves, the billabong a mirror of flames and leaves, a bank of sand and debris separating it from the long elbow of the river. She blinked, shocked by the explosion of senses. When had she last noticed beauty?

‘Never seen this place before in my life,’ the ghost said cheerfully. ‘It’s people I loved, not a place. In my death now — I got to know this place pretty well after me death. This place is useful. Ghosts turning up tend to scare people. It’s better people don’t know that you watch them.’

Jed shivered. ‘You spy on them?’ There was too much in her life that was bearable only because no one had witnessed it.

‘Nothing anyone wouldn’t like,’ the ghost assured her. ‘Just enough for me to know they’re going all right. Enough watching to . . .’ He smiled. It was a good smile. ‘Enough to keep a ghost’s feet on the ground.’

‘Who are they?’

‘That would be telling.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Fair enough. I keep an eye on my sister, now and then. And her kids. Never met the kids, but it’s good to see them scooting happy about the place. Mah and I had little enough happiness when we were small.’ The ghost stared out across the billabong. ‘And someone else.’

‘The girl you loved?’

The wrinkled eyes looked back at her, amused. ‘This ain’t a bloomin’ romance comic, you know.’

‘Bet it is a girl.’

‘Ghosts can’t pay you if they lose a bet.’

Which might be true. But the ghost’s sausages still lay warm and comforting in her stomach. ‘Do you watch the girl you loved?’

‘Yeah,’ he said slowly. ‘I watch her, now and then. Only girl there ever was for me, but then I never stayed around in one place long enough to know another.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Belle Magnifico, the mermaid of the South Seas.’ The ghost grinned at Jed’s expression. ‘That’s true as my name’s Fred. Belle had a mermaid tail and everything. We was in a circus together, her and me and Mah. And I don’t know why I’m tellin’ you this. Or feedin’ you sausages neither.’

‘Maybe I remind you of Belle the mermaid.’

‘Nah. Belle could make the audience stop breathing. No one would notice you.’

That hurt, even more because for some reason she thought this small man . . . ghost . . . told the truth. ‘Thanks.’

‘Did I say you aren’t beautiful? Belle’s hair was falling out. She had to wear a wig. Scars on her neck and arms. But she shone like she had swallowed a star. Still does. You . . .’ He winked. ‘You’re like me. You’ve worked hard so no one ever notices you. Do that long enough, and you start fading from the world. Grey ghosts, that’s you and me.’

‘I’m not a ghost.’ Or maybe I am, she thought. Maybe I did die a year ago. It had been a year since anyone had even touched her skin. That truckie had tried to put his hand on her knee, but she had shifted her bag so his hand landed on it instead. And she’d got the black eye from a block of wood, not the hand that held it.

‘No, you’re not a ghost, love. Not quite yet, anyhow.’ The words were strangely reassuring. Weirdest of all was the feeling that she wanted to sleep. Could sleep, safe and deeply, as she hadn’t slept in years. How long since she had slept through a whole night? Sleeping was dangerous, except in railway waiting rooms, but stationmasters soon caught on if you tried sleeping there two nights in a row. Catnaps in daylight were safer, under a tree in a park. To sleep a whole night . . .

Lightning flickered then vanished, as if a bulb was going out. The thunderclap was worse — some great hand ripped the air. Even the trees shook.

‘The storm’s passing to the south,’ the ghost remarked.

‘No, it’s not. It’s here!’

The ghost — Fred? — shook his head. ‘We’re not getting the worst of it. No lightning strikes here. Nor at Drinkwater neither.’

‘You know Drinkwater?’

‘Hard to miss a place as big as that. Reckon there’s whole countries that aren’t as big as Drinkwater.’ He looked out at the rain, coming down perfectly straight now, like icy spears. ‘This’ll stop soon. Wouldn’t want to be here in a proper dumping.’

This wasn’t proper rain? ‘Why not?’

He nodded at the billabong. ‘That used to be a section of the river, till some flood broke the river’s banks. When the flood went down this bit was left stranded. If a big flood washed down the river now, you and me’d be under five feet of water. If we hadn’t the sense to move. Which we have,’ he added. ‘So don’t worry, girlie.’

‘How fast does the water come when it floods?’

‘Fast as a car, sometimes, a wall of logs and muck. But we won’t get that tonight. Smell that? Hot dirt after rain. Best smell there is. Except maybe for sausages. What’s your name?’ the ghost added.

‘Jed.’ The new name came easily now. ‘Jed Kelly.’

A twitch of the lips. ‘Good name.’

‘That’s why I chose it.’

‘Rob from the rich and give to the poor? I did a bit of that too. The poor being me, of course. I’m Fred. But I told you that, didn’t I? Had a few names, in my time. Fred was my name when I died, at any rate. And for the best bit of my life. What are you doing out this way? Going to put on a tin helmet and rob a bank like old Ned?’

‘I’m eating sausages.’ There was no way Jed was going to tell him about the Thompsons.

‘You can’t con a con artist, darlin’. You’re planning something. The only people who use this road are going to Overflow or Sampsons’ or Drinkwater, and they go by car or truck or horse. Except for me, of course.’

‘Do con artists tell each other what their plans are?’

‘Only if they need a bit of help carrying them out.’ The ghost grinned at her encouragingly.

‘I don’t.’

‘Fair enough, then. How’d you get the black eye?’

No reason not to tell him that, at least. ‘An old bloke bashed me with a branch when I was asleep in a park in Melbourne. Got away from him okay.’ And left him crying on the ground too. A poor drunk skeleton of a man. She wouldn’t have lashed out with her heavy shoulder bag so viciously if she hadn’t been taken by surprise.

‘So your home’s in Melbourne?’

‘Don’t have a home, and when I did, it wasn’t in Melbourne.’

‘Why’ve you come here?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s where the truck was going.’ Which was true: not the whole truth, of course. But not a lie. Never a lie. Jed Kelly was guilty of many things, but not of lying.

‘And that’s the only answer I’m going to get, eh? But hitchhiking’s dangerous for girls. You hear about those poor dead lassies down in Victoria? All they found of them were their bodies.’

She shivered at the thought of dead girls’ heads, hidden somewhere by a madman. ‘I can keep myself safe.’

‘Can you now?’

She nodded, thinking of the men who had tried to take advantage of her. She’d had to learn tricks to survive the last year. But she had learned them.

‘So you just go where the road takes you? I know the feeling. But what set you travelling, eh?’

Memories seized her. Pain and guilt and secrets.

She wanted to run. Needed to run, even out into the rain, run till a car picked her up, took her somewhere, anywhere, away from the past, to new scenes blotting out horrors that swallowed her until she wasn’t there, didn’t want to be, not there or anywhere . . .

‘Hey, girlie, look at me!’

She glanced at him; she was panting, her hands trembling again. His wrinkles had tightened in concern. ‘You’re back in your past, ain’t you? When bad things happened?’

She managed a nod.

‘Well, you come back from there. I’m an old man. It’s okay for me to be a ghost. But you’re too young. You understand?’

‘No.’

‘You listen. I learned this the hard way and you’re getting it for free. Bad things happened to you? Stuff that hurts?’

Jed nodded, still fighting to keep the memories away.

‘Right, this is how to shove ’em away. Think of now, not then. What can you smell?’

‘Sausages.’

‘Yeah, but old Fred won’t always be around with sausages to help you. What else can you smell?’

You, she thought. Sweat and gum leaves. But he was kind so she couldn’t say that and, anyway, it was a fresh sweat smell. He must wash in the river. ‘Nothing.’

‘Wrong answer.’

‘But there isn’t . . . I can’t . . .’ Jed stopped. The breath rolled through her nostrils, clean and cold. And yes, there were scents here. Good ones. ‘Wet soil,’ she said slowly. ‘Hot soil that’s wet now. Cold air. And the billabong. It’s, um, fishier than the smell of the river.’

‘Ah, now you’re getting it. What can you hear?’

A million drops, slowed by the trees and falling to the soil. Something too low to hear properly, like the earth exhaling after the day and letting night-time in. All at once the fire-lit gum trees weren’t the same. Some carried their branches like arms reaching to the clouds. Others drooped like diamond-splattered umbrellas.

She smiled.

The ghost smiled in return. ‘Good girl. You’re back here again. When the bad things bite, remember you’re here now. Think of what you can smell, what you can hear. Think you can do it again?’

‘I . . . I think so.’

‘Takes practice. You’ve got a life ahead of you, girl.’

Colour faded a little from the world. A life ahead of her? Maybe, if her plan worked and she could convince the old folks at Drinkwater. Because if she couldn’t, this might be as far as the road could take her. As far as her strength could manage . . .

The ghost stared at her, intent. ‘You need to make the most of being alive while you can, girlie. Still not going to tell me what you’re doing so far off the beaten track?’

‘No.’ She waited for him to insist, even to turn mean.

He didn’t.

‘Fair enough,’ he said mildly. ‘Time for shut-eye, Jed Kelly. I’ll stoke up the fire in a while. No need for a blanket tonight.’

She didn’t have a blanket. Carrying a blanket made you look homeless, which meant shopkeepers looked at you suspiciously and café owners wouldn’t give you a few days’ work as a dishwasher either. Easier to find a newspaper in a bin and line her clothes with it to keep warm at night. But there were no rubbish bins out there.

She touched the outline of the book in her shoulder bag. It felt wrong to go to sleep without reading first — she usually needed at least a short visit to a world between the covers where things made sense and endings were tidy and people were happy. But torches were too bulky to shoplift, and candles flickered unless you were in a draught-proof room. She could probably make out the words by firelight, but it would seem unfriendly to read with the man . . . or ghost . . . beside her. He hadn’t even glanced at The Beasts all the time she had been there.

She settled her bag at the far end of the shelter and placed her head on it. Her feet poked out beyond the canvas, but the rain had stopped and the fire glowed. And she had a ghost to guard her sleep. She shut her eyes and felt the fire’s heat cover her like a quilt.

‘I’d sing you a lullaby, if I knew one, but the songs I know got words you don’t sing to a young lady.’

Where did he think she’d grown up? A sweet little house with a sweet little mum and no bad world past the front door? I bet I know every word you do and more, she thought. And slept.

Chapter 2

JED

Jed woke to the sound of a sheep. Not the sheep in the paddock by the road, but a sheep by the billabong.

‘Baaa?’ it said.

Jed opened her eyes. Light slanted gold from a sun slung low across the river. There was no sign of the ghost from the night before, or of the canvas shelter.

Instead a girl sat by the billabong, about ten metres away, scratching a sheep behind its horns. The girl had long wheat-coloured hair. She wore a dress to her ankles, not a modern Indian dress or a maxi skirt, but in some indefinable way a dress from perhaps a century earlier. A man with dark skin and laughter wrinkles sat next to her, a sack bulging on his lap. The early sunlight shimmered across the billabong, and the figures shimmered too — the laughing man, the smiling girl, the sheep, its knees weak with ecstasy as the girl scratched it.

‘You’re not going to let me cut that woolly fool’s throat, are you?’ the man asked resignedly.

‘No! Why was it trying to get into the tucker bag?’

‘Smelling for the sinkers, I reckon.’ The man took out a brown-white blob from the sack. He grinned. ‘Go on then. Feed the blasted thing. But we ain’t taking a sheep with us.’

‘Why not? We won’t even have to feed it. It could eat grass!’ The girl held the blob out to the sheep. It grabbed it with surprisingly long teeth and began to chew. Neither girl nor man — nor the sheep — glanced towards Jed.

Ghosts, Jed thought. Real ghosts, not like the gnome last night. And from so far back in the past, if their clothes were any guide, that they were probably dead. Because the ghosts she sometimes saw could be from any time, the future too, as though time had worn places of great pain or happiness thin and transparent, allowing her a glimpse of what had happened there.

Few ghosts were as solid as this girl and man. And sheep. If she spoke, they might turn around and see her too.

She didn’t. Why spoil their happiness with a tormented ghost from the future? And this day of theirs must have been extraordinarily happy to have survived the grinding sands of time.

‘Baa?’ said the ghost sheep, swallowing its latest mouthful with extreme enjoyment. It turned its head. For a second the sheep looked straight at Jed.

Then they were gone. Girl, man, sheep.

Jed waited, still and silent, wondering if they might return. But all she could hear was a fluting bird call high above her and the plop of a frog leaping into the billabong. Yet the echo of happiness remained, comforting, companionable. She could even still hear the sheep . . .

No, she thought. Those were the sounds of the sheep in the paddock across the road.

She sat up and looked around, in case the ghost from last night was still nearby. But there was no sign of him. Even the fire was blackened, and when she felt the air above it, cold and sodden. Its ashes could have been there for days, or even years.

Had the rain put out the flames? Had a living man poured water on it when he folded his tent and slipped away? Or had it been a ghost fire, ghost warmth, ghost sausages? She looked at the sandy ground. The rain had washed away all prints, even hers.

But she wasn’t hungry. Or rather she was hungry, but just with an I-want-breakfast sort of hunger, not the faintness that meant you had to breathe consciously and slowly just to keep going, going, going till there was a chance of food, leftovers on a plate at a truckies’ café (choose the table that hasn’t yet been cleared, eat the scraps on the plates while you pretend to look at the menu, then head to the loo, wash and leave).

Those sausages last night had been real, so the fire must have been real. And the man too. Definitely. Probably. Almost certainly. Because during the past two years sometimes nightmares had become real and what was real was nightmarish, and when you saw ghosts flickering out of the corner of your eye you began to wonder if you could tell what was real, and what was not.

She needed breakfast. She rummaged in her bag, drew the biscuits out and opened the packet, then leaned back on a tree to eat half the packet. No, all the packet, because she must be nearly there — the truckie who’d given her a lift had said that Drinkwater was only eight miles up the road, and she must have already walked at least two of them.

Whatever else awaited her at Drinkwater, there’d be food. And she could conquer the Thompsons better after a decent breakfast. A whole packet of squished-fly biscuits was about the best breakfast she knew. And a book to read while she ate, even if it was just her ‘emergency’ book and she knew most of it by heart already — John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, about the world being overrun by venomous plants after falling stars had made anyone who watched them blind, and a few survivors of a vicious plague trying to rebuild civilisation.

A book she could read again and again, a book about good people, doing good things in a crazy world. She loved sci-fi for that: seeing the ‘what if’ and how it could be survived, even one where nearly everyone in the world died in a plague or went blind or was eaten by the triffids.

She wouldn’t mind most people vanishing, even if she got triffids in their place. People who hurt others. People who saw others being hurt but didn’t want to get involved, would rather pretend it wasn’t happening, who pulled their lace curtains so they didn’t see what was happening just beyond them. Sometimes she hated lace-curtain people even more than those who inflicted the pain.

She found she was shaking again. Pain. Pain and blood and terror, and the worst had been her fault. You could run from what others had done to you, but it was harder to escape your own guilt. Just keep moving so you’re too busy surviving to remember . . .

The whisper might have been the wind. It might even have been last night’s ghost, but when she turned there was no one there, just shadows. But the words lingered. When the bad things bite, remember you’re here now.

She forced herself to smell: squished flies, the comforting scent of a much loved book.

Gum leaves, different from last night, as the sun dried them. Wet ashes.

She forced herself to look: to see the trees’ arms raised towards the sky, the lamb’s-fleece clouds. They were beautiful. The whole day was beautiful.

She could hear birds — four, no, five different calls. The rustle of a snake . . . She snapped around and grinned. No, a lizard in the leaves, shiny skinned and bronzed as the new two-cent coins.

And she could still hear the laughter of the girl ghost too. Feel the happiness like sunlight on her skin. She took another biscuit from the packet, bit it, tasted it, really tasted it. I’m here, she thought, as she swallowed the lovely fatty pastry and the sweet fruity jam inside, and she read a whole chapter while she ate the rest.

The past was gone. Strength returned. If she was going to have a future, she couldn’t flee now. She had to face the Thompsons.

She could do this. Time to stop running. Time to be a person again, and not a ghost.

She used her finger to find the last crumbs, finishing them regretfully. Time to get ready.

Time to look innocent. Respectable. Clean. Totally, absolutely trustworthy.

She looked around carefully before she undressed, to make sure last night’s ghost really had vanished, then washed all over, even her hair, using the scrap of soap she’d taken from the council toilets three towns back.

Wonderful to be free of grime. She fastened The Beasts into their bra, which she’d outgrown, but that was good because The Beasts looked smaller, then slipped on her only dress: a good one, Crimplene so it didn’t need ironing, twenty-five cents at St Vinnies, but she hadn’t even paid that, had shoved it into her bag and sneaked off with it. She had felt bad about that, but St Vinnies was supposed to help people who had little, and she had about as little as you could have. She suspected the woman at the counter had seen her go off with it too, and had not said anything, which somehow made her feel worse.

The dress was too long, right down to her knees, but that was good too, because old people didn’t like mini skirts. Would her black eye be a help or a hindrance? She hoped it made her look vulnerable. Not that she could do much about it now. If she waited till the bruise subsided, it might be too late to get what she needed from the Thompsons. And if this didn’t work, she wasn’t sure what to do next.

Survive. Somehow.

But this would work. It had to.

She plaited her hair, still wet. It looked better loose over her shoulders, but plaited was neater and old people, like the Thompsons, trusted neat. Plaits made her look younger and more vulnerable too.

Eyeliner? She still had the eyebrow pencil that had rolled out of that woman’s make-up bag. She hadn’t stolen it, just hadn’t pointed out where it had gone. Eyeliner was good for the waif look, but maybe no make-up was the way to go. She left the pencil in her bag.

Should she wash her jeans and T-shirt? No, they’d take too long to dry . . . She realised she was trying to find reasons to delay.

You can do this, she told herself. How hard can it be? Just one old couple to convince, that’s all. Old people were trusting. Jed Kelly could make today’s sad old country couple believe because they’d want to believe exactly what she wanted to tell them . . .

The sun gave a small bounce to emerge full and round above the billabong. It must be about seven o’clock. Too early for traffic on this kind of road, except for mums taking kids to school, and mums didn’t pick up hitchhikers. If she started walking now, she’d get to Drinkwater at about eight o’clock.

That could work too. Ordinary visitors arrived mid-morning. You had to offer someone breakfast if they arrived at eight o’clock. And the best part of the con was the absolutely true part. If the Thompsons kicked her out, she had nowhere else to go.

Wish me luck, she said to herself, or the ghosts, or the billabong.

She hung her bag over her shoulder, and began to walk.

Chapter 3

FRED

Fred waited till the girl had reached the road before he let himself move from the tree shadows to eat his sausage, cold from the night before. People do not look at what is there, old Madame had told him in his first month with her circus. They notice movement. When you are still, you vanish. Here in the shifting shadows of early morning the girl had looked straight at him and seen nothing. You got to be a pretty bonzer ghost, thought Fred, after more than twenty-five years.

He bit the sausage cautiously, careful to avoid his crook teeth. Even a ghost had to eat. The girl had been so tuckered out she hadn’t even stirred when he’d fetched his swag from among the trees and cooked another lot of sausages.

Jed Kelly. Who did she think she was kidding, with a name like that? Might as well put a sign around her neck that said Con artist. Watch out.

Who did she plan to con? That was the real question. What was Jed Kelly doing way out there, on a road that led from nowhere to nothing, unless she knew the folks who lived nearby? Not used to the bush either, or she’d have carried something to keep the rain off her. Easy enough to snitch a tarpaulin off a truck at a petrol station while the driver was inside, pigging out on eggs and bacon. Dumps were good spots to forage too.

If this Jed Kelly didn’t know enough to come in out of the rain, she wouldn’t even know how to catch a fish for her dinner. Which reminded him . . . Fred threw in his fish traps quickly, before the girl got too far ahead. He had to check out what she was up to — not that it was likely to involve Mah and the kids, or even Belle, but better to be sure than sorry.

She’d have to walk to wherever she was going at this time of the morning. Wouldn’t be any cars for an hour or so. He’d been watching so long he knew the traffic patterns now as well as he knew the best places to catch a turtle — good eating on a turtle — and when the apples on the roadside trees would be ripe, grown from thrown-out apple cores. And the plums and quinces, pears, persimmons and oranges that survived after a farmhouse had been burned or eaten by white ants. Not to mention which householders grew spuds — easy to wriggle your hand down and bandicoot a few potatoes from each plant then smooth the soil over; no one would ever know they were gone. A pumpkin here, some cobs of corn there, nothing anyone would miss. Fred managed, and managed well.

Come winter he’d headed up north, where it was warmer and his bones ached less and where no one would recognise him. Could pick up odd jobs there; even find a place that gave room and board sometimes. Sleep in a proper bed, have a shower, a beer and a yarn after work, head down to the library and look up the newspapers and catch up on what he’d missed, especially the Gibber’s Creek Gazette, see the faces he loved at weddings, fêtes, read the names of their families in birth notices. Small-town papers mentioned everyone at least once a year, and those who were active in the community were there every month or so.

Coupla places he’d even thought of settling down. That pub out of Narromine with the widowed barmaid; that station up the north-west that had offered him the foreman’s job and a house to go with it.

But he’d always hit the road again. Told himself for years that he did it because if he settled in one place too long there was more chance of someone talking about him, or putting his face in the paper where someone might recognise it. He didn’t worry about coppers these days — his armed robbery case would be buried under ten tonnes of paperwork, if the silverfish hadn’t eaten it. More danger from one of the blokes he’d served with during the war. Hero Still Alive, the headlines would shout. The whole story would be raked up again. He’d gone to too much trouble to be a ghost to have it ruined now.

But as the years went by, walking the road, choosing which way to go by keeping the wind on his back, not his face, he’d come to realise he’d chosen this, not had it forced upon him. All his life he’d been a breeze, not a tree. He’d floated into lives and out of them. If he had a home at all as a ghost, it was here, the campsite by the billabong that he’d found a couple of years after his official death, the bush thick enough around to vanish into when a car or horse approached, the river his bathroom and his larder.

The world changed around him. He’d seen TV for the first time in a pub almost ten years earlier; saw more and more flickers through the windows now as he wandered down streets. Amazing, having a picture theatre in almost every house, but he missed the piano and singsongs you heard before TV took over evenings. He’d heard helicopters for the first time on a television, from the war in that place called Vietnam.

Dunnies had almost vanished except further outback; supermarkets replaced corner stores. Bonzer places to grab a bit of tucker, those supermarkets: easy to chuck a packet of sausages down his trousers — and that had changed too, food in fridges and packages. Kids all wore shoes to school these days. Blokes had long hair and beards, and cars were as long as a house and shiny as a two-bob bit, except it was dollars and cents now, like the Yanks. They’d been good blokes in the war, the Yanks . . .

Time to go. He washed the sausage grease off his hands with a bit of sand and river water, and began to slip between the trees, just far enough away from the road not to be seen. Because even a ghost could love. And while he’d liked Jed Kelly, she was a stranger and a drifter who must have learned some hard tricks to survive. When someone was hurt too often sometimes they lashed out at others too.

Fred might be a ghost, but he could still keep an eye out, to protect those who he loved.

Chapter 4

JED

A car passed when she’d been walking almost an hour, but she didn’t bother sticking out her thumb. She was nearly there, and yesterday’s air had been washed clean of dust and pollen and was as sweet as cherry cordial. Sheep and rocks steamed gently as the sun slid higher up the sky. The river gleamed, silent and magnificent, then vanished as the land sloped up into more paddocks, neat fences, more sheep and a scattering of brown-and-white cattle, standing calm and clean as if they had been carefully placed to be ornamental.

She turned a corner and saw the house. Or not a house, but trees, the wrong green for gum trees, and a scattering of smaller houses like satellites beyond the garden. It was only as she drew closer that she could see the high roof of the main house in the green. Two storeys then. A winding drive, lined with more of the not-gum-tree trees, a big turning circle and a wide veranda; a big corrugated shed to one side, the faint bark of dogs behind the house.

No sign on the gate. This place was so in charge of its surroundings it didn’t need to announce its name. But it was Drinkwater — had to be, for surely there was no other house this size nearby. One of the few facts she knew about the people she was about to meet was that they were rich, richer than rich. Rich people lived in big houses.

She didn’t like big houses. Big houses got turned into cheap flats for people who drank their rent away, or into places called the Princess Charlotte Reform Home for Girls, with nothing princessy or girlish about them, and nothing homelike either, unless your home was the sulphur pits of hell.

But this big house was . . . okay. A swing made from two ropes and a slab of wood hung under the largest of the trees. No neat institutional garden beds, but roses in a dozen clashing shades and a climber shedding blue flowers over a comfortable veranda. Not neat. She liked that in a house and garden.

She trod across the gravel then up the steps. White wicker chairs on the veranda, cushions, a table with a book, open and face down, and horses on the cover. In her experience horse books focused too much on horses and not enough on people. Good. Hopefully whoever was reading it was a better judge of horses than of people, would smile and accept every single thing she had prepared to say. A doorknocker, which she had better use, or she would run back up the drive and the best chance of her life would be lost.

She could do this. She could.

She lifted the knocker. Polished. She wished it weren’t. People whose doorknockers were polished were too aware of every single thing they owned and that it might all be threatened, by someone like her . . .

Knocked.

The house swallowed the noise. She knocked again, loudly. Waited.

Footsteps. The door opened.

‘If you are selling a religion or bunion cream, we already have our own.’ A woman, carefully taking in Jed, the dress, the bag. ‘And if it’s Avon calling, I buy my make-up direct from Paris.’

‘Do I look like I sell make-up?’

‘No.’ The woman was old, though it had taken Jed some seconds to realise it. Old people stooped, wore clothes that dragged. This woman was straight as a broomstick. Her white dress was fashionably above her knees, though not short enough to

Reviews for The Ghost by the Billabong

[siri51 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Set in 1969 - liked the part about Honeysuckle Creek and the moon landing - but Jed inheriting a million dollars when she didn’t even know if she was really related?