The Audrey of the Outback Collection (11 page)

‘All right,’ said Audrey. ‘I’ll stay and look after Mum. I’ll even remind her to clean her teeth.’

‘You might not need to go that far.’ Dad’s eyes twinkled in the candlelight. ‘There are other children to play with in town. And it’s only for a month.’

‘Stumpy will help,’ said Audrey.

‘I’m sure he will. But it would be better to leave him outside. I have a feeling Mrs Paterson wouldn’t take kindly to your camel trotting through her house.’

‘I s’pose staying here is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick,’ she said. ‘But only a bit.’

There was so much to see in Beltana.

Eight

Excited, but a little nervous, Audrey slipped her hand into her mum’s. Douglas, on Mum’s other side, swung her arm like a rope. In daylight, things didn’t seem as gloomy as they had the night before. Audrey missed Dad and Price already. But there was so much to see in Beltana and all day to explore.

Some buildings, like the police station, schoolhouse and hotel were solidly built. But others looked as though a strong wind might blow them over. One house they passed was made of hessian bags stitched together.

Every road led somewhere—to more roads, buildings or people. Up north, the tracks near the Barlows’s house led only into the bush. It wasn’t often that someone turned up on those tracks.

Audrey looked up at the sky. Thick clouds skidded overhead. Everything was fast in town, even the clouds.

A truck rattled by, stirring up more dust. Audrey blinked grit from her eyes. Apart from a couple of fenced gardens, there were few bushes or grasses to keep down the dust. Every movement or puff of wind sent it flying.

An Afghan in a turban and flowing clothes led a string of camels through the dust left behind by the truck. He didn’t blink or turn his head. Audrey was impressed with the straightness of his back.

On the hotel verandah a man with dark patches on his jacket leaned against a pole. A wide hat-brim shielded his face. He clutched a glass as though it was stuck to his hand.

A short woman with a basket over one arm stopped to talk. When she smiled it was like the sun coming out. ‘Good morning.’

‘It
is
a good morning. Fair dinkum,’ said Audrey. ‘We’re going to the store! Mum says it’s got
everything
in there, even lollies. We might not be able to buy any, but we can look at them all.’

The woman laughed. She had a square-shaped face and a flat nose. Because she was almost as wide as she was tall, she looked square all over.

‘New in town, are you?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Audrey’s mum. ‘We arrived last night …’

‘My dad says we come from the other side of the black stump,’ Audrey explained, without waiting for Mum to finish her sentence. ‘Where the wind starts.’

Mum squeezed her fingers.

‘I’m hurrying today. My little ’un has the croup. My name’s Hilda Jenkins. Drop in any time. We’re just past the schoolhouse. There’ll be children out the front of our place, squabbling.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Audrey.

‘There’s ten of them. So there’s always something to squabble about.’

Mum’s fingers twitched against Audrey’s again. Audrey looked up. Her mum had an odd stare, yet she didn’t seem to be focusing on anything.

‘Me and Bert, my husband, we like kids,’ added Mrs Jenkins. ‘We’re as happy as a box of birds.’

Audrey figured that was good luck. If they didn’t like children, they’d have to put them in the paddock like cattle, then round them up at night for bed.

‘Only hard part, except for feeding the blighters, is finding names for them all,’ confided Mrs Jenkins. ‘When number eight was born, we couldn’t settle on a name. So we called the baby “Boy”. We could agree that he was definitely a
boy
.’

Mum suddenly dropped Audrey’s hand, crumpled onto the dusty ground and lay still.

Douglas wailed, ‘Mum’s dead.’

Nine

Douglas threw himself down and held onto Mum with both arms.

‘Move aside, dear. I can’t help if you get in the way,’ said Mrs Jenkins.

Audrey gently detached Douglas. She picked him up and sat him on her hip. He clung to her like a sack of wheat on a hook.

Mrs Jenkins knelt beside Mum, then she placed her fingers under Mum’s chin.

‘She’s not dead, little fella,’ said Mrs Jenkins, breathlessly. ‘She has a pulse. That means her heart is beating, and her hands just moved.’

‘Are you sure?’ Audrey’s own heart was beating loud enough for both her
and
Mum.

The man from the hotel verandah joined them. He seemed to move slowly, yet he reached them in no time at all. Then he hovered, not sure what to do.

A woman in a green dress, her hands fluttering like an impatient butterfly, left her front yard to scurry over. Her eyes darted here and there, showing that her thoughts were fluttering as much as her hands.

Mum muttered, but made no sense.

‘She’s all right, Dougie,’ Audrey told her brother. ‘She made a noise.’

Mum opened her eyes and tried to sit up.

Mrs Jenkins slid one arm around her back to support her. ‘Don’t try to stand. Sit still.’

She looked up at the woman with the fluttering hands. ‘Sylvia, would you go and let the sisters at the hospital know we’re coming?’

Sylvia scuttled away, her hands moving faster than her feet.

‘I’ve got the horses and dray just there,’ said the man from the hotel verandah.

Mrs Jenkins, solid and calm, nodded. ‘We’ll take her to get her checked.’

She was good at telling people what to do. A mother of so many children would have lots of practice.

‘I don’t want to go.’ Mum struggled to push the helping hands away. Her voice was faint, but her words were now clear. ‘My children need me …’

Audrey trembled. She tried to stop it, so she wouldn’t scare Douglas even more. It didn’t help that he had his arms wrapped tightly around her neck. She was starting to feel dizzy herself. With one hand, she eased his grip. ‘It’s all right, Dougie. Mum’s sitting up.’

Douglas buried his face in her neck.

‘I’ll see to the children.’ Mrs Jenkins looked at Audrey. ‘Where are you staying?’

Audrey couldn’t think of anything but Mum’s blank stare and the thumping of her own heart. Then she said, ‘With … um … Mrs Pating … Paterson.’

‘Paterson’s curse,’ said the man. He blushed and his whole face turned as red as his nose. ‘Sorry … slip of the tongue.’

Mrs Jenkins glared at him. ‘Norm, if you spent less time bending your elbow at the pub, you might find your brain worked at the same time as your mouth.’

Head down, he sloped off to get his horses and dray.

Maybe the red-faced man had been joking. But Audrey felt cold fingers dance down her spine. If Mum was kept in the hospital by the sisters, she and Douglas would be alone with Mrs Paterson. Audrey knew about the weed called Paterson’s curse. It was poisonous.

Ten

Heat from Mrs Paterson’s wood oven warmed Audrey’s back. ‘I want to come to the hospital too,’ she said.

A picture of Mum crumpling onto the dusty footpath kept flashing into her mind. The last hour had been a blur of unfamiliar faces: Mrs Jenkins, the man with the red nose and Sylvia with the fluttering hands.

Audrey patted her little brother on the shoulder.

Mrs Paterson folded her hands. ‘I
beg
your pardon?’

Audrey hesitated, not sure what this particular
beg your pardon
was about.

Mrs Paterson sighed. ‘I want to come,
please
.’

‘I want to come too,
please
,’ repeated Audrey in her politest voice.

‘No, I’m sorry. You cannot.’

‘But you just made me say
please
.’ A knot formed in Audrey’s stomach.

‘Manners are not permission.’ Mrs Paterson made a shooing motion.

‘Dad said I have to look after Mum.’

‘A hospital is not the place for children. They carry germs. The sisters won’t let you in.’ Mrs Paterson placed a black hat on her grey hair and slid in a long pin to hold it in place. ‘I will visit your mother and report back.’

‘But you don’t love her,’ Audrey burst out.

‘I know how to do my duty.’ Mrs Paterson hooked a handbag over her right arm.

Duty
was one of those tricky words that seemed to be one thing but was really another. And it didn’t sound good.

Mrs Paterson walked from the kitchen into the dim hallway.

Audrey and Douglas followed her.

‘Are you sure you don’t know where your father is?’ Mrs Paterson stopped beside the open sitting-room door.

Audrey shook her head. ‘He follows the dingoes. Although sometimes
they
follow
him
. At night they sneak into his camp to eat his boots.’

‘I hope I can trust you children alone here till I return,’ said Mrs Paterson.

‘I’ve got Stumpy,’ said Audrey, without thinking.

‘Who?’

Audrey covered her mouth with one hand. She hadn’t meant to speak about Stumpy. But now that she had, it was best to tell the truth. Mrs Paterson would sniff out a made-up story in a second. Besides, Stumpy was Audrey’s friend. She wasn’t going to tell fibs about him.

‘Stumpy’s my camel. He’s outside. Dad said he could stay but I wasn’t to let him run through the house.’

Douglas wriggled from Audrey’s grasp and scooted out the door into the overgrown garden, where there were good hiding places and no snappy voices.

Mrs Paterson’s eyebrows stretched up into the shade of her hat-brim. ‘If you tell lies, you’ll grow pimples on your tongue.’

‘Stumpy’s my camel, all right, but he’s invisible.’

There was a long pause where all Audrey could hear was the ticking of the clock on the sitting room mantelpiece.
Tick-tock, tick-tock
. Each swing of the pendulum seemed louder than the last.

‘There’s no such thing as an invisible camel.’ Mrs Paterson’s voice was as sharp as tin. ‘He’s imaginary.’

‘He’s
not
imaginary. He’s real. But not everyone can see him.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Don’t you believe in things you can’t see?’ asked Audrey.

‘Of course not. No sensible person would.’

‘But people dream. And you can’t see that.’

‘Someone sees it. The dreamer.’

‘’Zactly,’ said Audrey. ‘Someone can see Stumpy.
Me
.’

Eleven

Audrey stood alone in the sitting room. Dougie was still in the garden and Stumpy had sulked off somewhere. Mrs Paterson had hurt his feelings when she said he wasn’t real.

With the curtains drawn, the room was gloomy. The air was stuffy. White cloth covered the arms and backs of the chairs. A faded red carpet square covered the floorboards, except for a strip around the edge of the room. The only sound was the ticking of the clock.

Before Mrs Paterson left, she had recited a long list of what to do and what not to do. Mostly ‘Don’ts’, with a few ‘Do’s’ that were boring. Audrey couldn’t remember most of them. She hoped that as long as she didn’t break anything, Mrs Paterson wouldn’t be too fussy.

Fresh air wouldn’t be on anyone’s ‘Don’t’ list. Audrey’s mum always said fresh air made people strong and healthy. Which was a good thing, because back home they had no glass in their windows. Audrey tucked back the curtains and lifted the window. A breeze trickled in. Specks of dust danced along the beam of sunlight.

She saw Douglas at the side of the house, jumping about like a newborn lamb. Usually he liked pretending to be a bird. But Audrey had never seen a bird hop like that.

The day before, Audrey couldn’t keep a lid on her excitement. But already, after only one night, she longed to go home. Her house had no fancy curtains or proper floors like Mrs Paterson’s did, but it was friendly.

‘I’ll distractionate myself,’ whispered Audrey. She nodded, pleased with such a good idea and a difficult word like ‘distractionate’.

The red-nosed man, Norm, had called Mrs Paterson a ‘curse’. But Audrey’s dad had said there was a good side to everyone. So there must be one in Mrs Paterson. Audrey decided to look for it.

She thought hard.

Mrs Paterson was letting them stay in her house. That wasn’t completely good, but Audrey had to start somewhere.

She spun round, looking for ideas, and spotted a wooden bookcase. The old lady liked books, especially ‘good’ ones.

Carefully, Audrey ran her finger along each spine. They were probably books for grown-ups with long words. But Audrey hoped there might be pictures. She chose a book, opened it, then lifted it to her face and sniffed. The paper had a fresh, woody aroma.

At home, Audrey kept
Martin Rattler
and her diary in a tin under her bed. The tin kept out termites. They thought books were yummy food. Termites didn’t care about important words. All they thought about were their termite tummies.

Memories of home made Audrey feel itchy. She frowned, then turned a page of Mrs Paterson’s book and found a drawing of a gully with rocks each side.

Outside, Douglas squealed.

Audrey jumped.

Then she heard another sound that sent her running down the hallway.

Twelve

Mrs Paterson’s garden was full of goats.
Starving
goats. Douglas jumped up and down, clapping his hands.