Somewhere around the Corner Read Free

her feet. ‘Come on, hand me jumper over and stick your own on.’
    Barbara handed him the jumper. ‘I’m not cold now, thanks.’
    ‘Well stick it on anyway.’
    ‘Why.’
    Young Jim looked embarrassed. He gestured around the upper part of his chest. ‘Because what you’re wearing—’
    Barbara looked down at her T-shirt. It had a V-neck, but was perfectly ordinary. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
    ‘You can see your you-know-whats through it, that’s what’s wrong! I mean, your trousers are bad enough and we don’t want people staring at you. We need to be—what’s the word—inconspicuous, that’s it.’
    Barbara blushed fiercely and fumbled as she untied her sweat-shirt from around her waist. She pulled it on roughly.
    Young Jim slung his swag over his shoulder.
    ‘Come on, we’d better get a move on.’
    ‘But where are we going?’ Barbara stumbled as she tried to catch up. Young Jim took her arm to steady her.
    ‘Home—don’t know what else I can do with you.’
    ‘But I don’t have a home, even in my own time.’
    ‘We’re going to my home. Ma will know what to do. At least she’ll give you a skirt or something decent to wear.’
    ‘Your home? But where is it?’
    Young Jim stopped and grinned. ‘Poverty Gully. The best darn dole camp in the whole of New South Wales.’
    Young Jim walked fast, dodging women in high-heel shoes and shiny-seamed stockings, and men in funny hats. He had an easy lope that seemed to stretch forever. It was hard to keep up with him. It was all so small and drab and strange. It was hard not to stop and stare. The strange-looking people wearing strange clothes, the old-fashioned cars, with horses plodding among them, on funny-looking roads, the sparrows darting at the droppings, the strange signs along the street:
    Depression Prices! Great bargain sale! £2000 worth of drapery and crockery!
    Gents Tailor Made Suits To Measure!
    Victor Player Pianos. For Your Entertainment and Convenience!
    It’s Always Winter With Our New Refrigeration System!
    Barbara turned her head away from the small corpses, all in rows, in the butcher’s window. They were too red for chickens—rabbits maybe? There were too many questions, and no time to ask. Even the smells were odd, as if this world had never heard of underarm deodorant or the sweet cold scent of air-conditioning floating into the street.
    Young Jim paused. He looked at her with concern. ‘Going too fast for you?’
    Barbara nodded, out of breath.
    ‘Sorry. I’ll try to go a bit slower.’
    ‘Why do we need to hurry?’
    ‘Well, we want to find a train round dusk, and—’
    ‘But it won’t be dark for hours.’
    ‘Shut up and listen will you? Your mouth is robbing your ears. Poverty Gully’s three to four hundred miles south of here. We can’t walk all theway. Well, I could I reckon, but I bet you can’t. So we’re going to have to jump a train.’
    ‘What’s that mean?’
    ‘Cripes, where have you been all your life? No, don’t tell me.’ Young Jim put his hand up as Barbara tried to speak. ‘From somewhere round the bally corner.’
    ‘Don’t you believe me?’
    Young Jim looked at her.
    ‘No,’ he said frankly. ‘I reckon you got a crack on the head back there and can’t think straight. But it doesn’t matter. Either way you’ve got nowhere else to go. That means it’s up to me to look after you. Ma would have my hide if I did any less.’
    Young Jim took her hand and began to walk more slowly.
    ‘Jumping a train is when you hide on a goods train or something,’ he explained. ‘It’s what you do when you don’t have the money to pay the fare. You got any money?’
    Barbara shook her head. Even if she did have money, she realised, it wouldn’t be worth anything here.
    ‘Well, I’ve got fourpence ha’penny. That’ll buy us two tuppenny tickets to out past the goods yard. We’ll hide in one of the rattlers heading south.’
    ‘The train’ll take us all the way to Poverty