Digging to Australia Read Free Page A

inched off in such a disdainful way that I almost laughed. Once it was out of the way so that I was sure I wouldn’t squash it, I eased myself through and stood up and looked around me.
    I blinked in the brightness of the space, a triangular space, absolutely light and hot. It must have been midday, for I recall no stretching of shadows. There were swings, one swing, rather, and four dangling chains, the ground hollowed between them where many feet had scuffed. There was a roundabout, old and splintery, traces of red paint still visible. There was a climbing frame, peaked like a witch’s hat. The seesaw was just an iron stump.
    There was no way in, other than the way I’d forced. The hedge of briars around me was high and thick. The air buzzed. I was in, but nobody else could come. The space under the hedge seemed to have healed behind me. The ground reflected the sun’s white glare and beat its hotness onto my head.
    The cat wasn’t there. It must have squeezed its way out again as I struggled in after it. I don’t know why I followed the cat. Because I wanted it, I suppose.
    I put my foot on the roundabout and pushed. It would not give at first, not until I pushed with all my might and then it gave with a terrible harsh cry like a donkey’s bray, and I could hear the pattering of stuff falling underneath, flakes of rusting iron, perhaps, or splinters. It moved only a little, then creaked to a stop.
    I sat on the swing and held the warm chains. I swung backwards and forwards, just a little to begin with, shy of the emptiness. But, despite myself, my legs bent backwards and forwards more and more eagerly until I was swinging high, high enough to jolt the frame. I cut a cool slice through the air and my pigtails hung down behind me, grazing the ground with their ends as I rushed forward, my head back, squinting through my lashes at the sun.
    â€˜Never look straight at the sun,’ Bob had often advised, ‘or you’ll go blind.’ Also, ‘Never go out in the midday sun, not without a shady hat. Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. It addles the brain.’ And he would know, I supposed, having been a desert rat.
    But still, despite his advice, I swung in the midday sun and I trailed my hair in the dust and I dared to let the brightness into my eyes, so that when I stopped and stood up I felt myself stagger and my eyes dazzle with fuzzy coloured images. Addled.
    You never knew with Bob whether what he said was nonsense. When I was a tiny girl I took it all in, sucked it all in like a sponge, truth and lies and the in-between things, because it isn’t all black and white.
    I squeezed my way back and my hair caught on a thorn, and I knelt on something sharp and hurt my knee. I looked round the graves once more but there was no sign of the cat. My hands were scratched and beaded with blood from the catching thorns. I licked the blood away as I hurried home, afraid, making up excuses for my absence. I didn’t know how long I’d been gone but it felt like ages and ages. I was sure that I’d missed lunch, that they would have discovered my escape, that would be the end of the game.
    And I was right about the hole. Bob greeted me flushed and filthy, in a great state about the disappearance of half the garden.
    â€˜Subsidence,’ he said grimly. ‘That’s all it is.’ He had been mixing concrete, and he was so troubled by the subsidence that he didn’t think to ask where I’d been. And neither did Mama. Apart from tutting at the state of my clothes, she said nothing. She was just washing the lettuce when I arrived in the kitchen. It seemed that less time had elapsed than I’d thought. ‘Lay the table, dear,’ she said, as if everything was perfectly ordinary, ‘but for goodness sake, wash your hands first.’
    The playground was all mine. Not many children have one all to themselves, a real playground with a swing and a