Sydney Bridge Upside Down Read Free Page A

the metal with it until he was clear. Once I had seen him doing that after a skid, and I thought it was great how he stopped himself from toppling into the ditch. He was a great rider.
    Cal came back. He said: ‘That jampot nearly cut me.’
    ‘It slipped,’ I told him. ‘And if you don’t wash the dishes, another one might slip.’
    I was only kidding. He was too short to wash up. I did that. He did the wiping.
    After we had done the dishes, we took off our pyjamas and had a run with nothing on. We ran up and down the passage and in and out of the rooms, and some of the time he chased me and some of the time I chased him. WhenI caught him I gave him two smacks on the behind and, to be fair, I let him catch me a couple of times. Mostly we stayed inside when we had this sort of fun, but some days I’d chase him outside and then scare him by shutting the door, and he’d bang on the door and keep looking around in case somebody came down the side-path or Mrs Prosser next door happened to look out of her bathroom window; she could see our back porch from her bathroom. One day, during one of these games, I went to the dunny which was beside the wash-house, and I suddenly thought I would be trapped if anybody called, I’d have to stay in there until the caller left, and what if the caller realised I was in there and decided to wait until I was finished? I got so excited I couldn’t do anything for a while, not until I’d made myself think of the river on a cold day. When I did leave the dunny, the coast was clear. Lucky for me, I thought.
    ‘Righto, boy, now we’ll do some weeding,’ I said after Cal had got in his second lot of smacks. ‘Ten minutes in the garden. Before the sun’s too hot.’
    ‘Why don’t we pick passion-fruit?’ asked Cal. ‘Dad said I could help.’
    ‘ I give the orders,’ I said.
    But we did pick passion-fruit, because that seemed like more fun to me too. I stood on the shed roof and tossed the passion-fruit to Cal, and he caught most of them, the only ones he missed were the ones I aimed at his head, he ducked those.
    Up on the shed roof, I could see along the backyards, all five of them. Of course there were once a lot more backyards, they used to go nearly half-way to the river.Nowadays, with the works closed, there were only five houses left in Calliope Bay, the others had been pulled down. Every backyard was very much like the next—vegetable garden, shed, passion-fruit vine—except for the Kelly backyard. The Kelly backyard was full of rusty truck and car parts. This was because Mr Kelly, a short gingery man, was a carrier. He owned a Reo lorry and kept it in his backyard, which was where he had let other trucks and cars go to rust. Another reason for the mess was that Dibs Kelly’s big brother, Buster, fixed motor-bikes there. Buster Kelly owned an Indian, and everybody said it was a tremendous roaring thing. Buster sure made that Indian go.
    ‘No, it wasn’t the only reason I called,’ I told Mrs Kelly later in the morning. ‘Of course, if Buster does turn up and offer me a ride, I won’t say no. I rather like speeding along on the back of his Indian. How about you, Mrs Kelly?’
    ‘On that roaring thing?’ said Mrs Kelly, who was plucking a fowl. ‘Not for me, thanks!’
    ‘It’s quite safe,’ I told her. ‘Personally, I trust Buster.’
    Mrs Kelly, who was large and purple-cheeked, gave me one of her knowing looks. She said: ‘It’s not me you must convince, young man. Wasn’t it your mother who said you were not to ride on Buster’s bike? Or was it somebody else’s mother?’
    ‘My mother did say that,’ I said. ‘But it was ages ago. I don’t suppose she’d mind now.’
    ‘Buster wouldn’t want to go against her wishes,’ Mrs Kelly said. ‘We can’t be sure what they are until she gets back. And she’s only been gone a week, so she won’t be thinking of coming back yet.’
    ‘She won’t mind,’ I said. ‘Especially when she sees how we’ve