Somewhere around the Corner Read Free Page A

Gully?’
    Young Jim shook his head. ‘The nearest station’s about fifty miles from there. We’ll hail a lift if we’re lucky. Otherwise it’s shanks’s pony.’ He caught Barbara’s startled look. ‘We’ll walk, stupid. Shanks’s pony is your bally legs.’
    ‘Fifty miles?’
    ‘We’ll get a lift,’ Young Jim reassured her. ‘You hungry?’
    Barbara nodded. Suddenly she was starving.
    ‘Me too. I could eat a maggoty horse as long as it had sauce on it. But we’d better save that fourpence ha’penny for the tickets.’

chapter three
Young Jim
    The goods yard smelt of soot and coal and the hot metal of iron rails and trains. Young Jim glanced up and down the line. The girl stumbled at his side. What was her name again? Bubba, that was it. By cripes, he hoped she was all right. If only he could get her home to Ma. Ma would know what to do. Ma always did.
    ‘Here, in this one. Quietly. I’ll give you a leg up.’
    ‘What—’
    ‘Shhh, they’ll hear us. Up on to the tarpaulin on top. Think you can make it? All right, one, two, three, heave!’
    The girl scrambled onto the tarpaulin. Her hair looked like a cap around her head in the moonlight. A weird way to cut a girl’s hair, thought Jim. She thrust her hand down to help him up.
    ‘I’m right,’ he grunted. ‘There, we’re up.’ He felt around the tarpaulin and thrust his swag inside. ‘Here, we’d better crawl under if we can. It’ll be warmer. Less chance of being seen, too. Depends what’s underneath the tarp.’
    He lifted the flap and peered down. ‘We don’t want to be crawling in with a load of coal or superphosphate. No, it’s soap. I bet there’s a thousand boxes there. Sunlight, I’ll bet. We’ll stink like Friday night at the bathhouse by the time we get home. Come on, you get under first.’
    They snuggled under the tarpaulin side by side, propping up the edge with the swag and packets of soap so they could breathe. It felt warmer immediately, though it was stuffy with the smell of soap. They lay quietly for a few minutes, listening for voices or any sign that they’d been seen.
    ‘Jim?’ Barbara’s whisper was uncertain in the darkness under the tarpaulin.
    ‘Mmmm.’
    ‘What’s a dole camp?’
    ‘Don’t you know anything? It’s where you go when you don’t have a house of your own and you don’t have money for the rent. There’s a big one out at Happy Valley and one up Newcastle way. We were there for a time. Cripes, it was crook. Everyonefeeling hopeless and kids crying or playing in the dirt and everyone bitching at each other all the time. We got out of there real fast.’
    ‘Is the place we’re going like that? What did you call it, Poverty Gully?’
    ‘Nah, the gully’s not like that. It’s different.’
    ‘Jim?’
    ‘Mmm? You can ask questions, can’t you!’
    ‘When do you think the train’ll start?’
    ‘Beats me. They weren’t handing out timetables at the gate, were they? Maybe soon. Maybe not till morning.’
    ‘What’ll they do if they find us?’
    ‘Make us get off. Might be different if we were grown up. Some of the railway dicks are supposed to be a bit rough.’
    She was silent again. Young Jim shook his head in the darkness. He didn’t think he’d ever been so scared as before when she’d fainted back there, with her face so white and her forehead all covered in sweat. He’d thought she’d been hurt for sure. Who had she been living with, anyway? Didn’t they at least have some girls clothes to put her in? Didn’t she have anyone to look after her except him?
    ‘Jim? How do you know how to do this, jumping rattlers and everything?’
    ‘Because that’s how I got up to Sydney. Me and my Uncle Bill. Ma gave us money for our fares, but Uncle Bill said why waste it. So we jumped the rattler out of town. Ma would have had our hides if she’d known.’
    ‘Where’s your Uncle Bill now?’
    ‘He’s heading north with Aunty Eva. He thinks there’s a chance of work up