The Tunnels of Tarcoola Page 8

  When Miss Gordon was upset the other day, what was it she had said? ‘We won’t let the wolf boy get it.’ What was ‘it’? The will? Maybe the wolf boy, whoever he was, wanted to destroy it so she couldn’t have the house.

  But no, thought Kitty. None of that made sense, because if there was a will like that she wouldn’t have hidden it.

  Could there be something else in the house, a sort of treasure chest? Kitty’s heart beat faster. She pictured handfuls of diamond necklaces, sparkling like icicles, worth lots of money. Maybe enough to buy the house back from the other Mrs Wolf. But then, why hadn’t Miss Gordon done that?

  Maybe it was just the old lady’s mind wandering. Mr Wolf had left her with nothing, but she didn’t want to believe it.

  Anyway – a thought struck Kitty – if there was a treasure chest it might not be in the house. Andrea had told her that there was not much there, and Miss Gordon herself had described the house as having gone to ‘rack and ruin’. The best hiding place would be somewhere in those tunnels.

  But what would happen if the house was demolished? The picture of it flashed into Kitty’s mind – the dull roar, the collapse inwards, rubble flying in slow motion, clouds of dust. All collapsing and falling into the shaft, filling it, blocking the entrance for ever and ever.

  Kitty jumped up. Her mother was in the garden, as usual.

  ‘Mum,’ she called. ‘Can I pick some flowers and take them to Miss Gordon?’

  ‘That’s a sweet idea, darling. Don’t be long, though.’

  Together they made a bouquet of daffodils, scented freesias, some daisies and a few red bottlebrushes. Kitty found some coloured paper in a drawer and carefully wrapped the flowers. Then she ran through the streets to the Sunset Home.

  There was no one in the quiet entrance hall. Kitty ran lightly up the stairs. Miss Gordon was hobbling along the corridor outside her room. When she saw Kitty she pressed a finger to her lips.

  ‘Shhhh!’ she whispered. ‘Don’t let him see you!’

  Kitty looked around in alarm. There was no one in sight.

  ‘Who?’ she asked.

  ‘The wolf boy.’ Miss Gordon leaned against the wall. Her face was white and dry, like handmade paper. Kitty took her arm.

  ‘Look, I’ve brought you some flowers,’ she said. She gently guided Miss Gordon back to her room.

  ‘Oh, you’re a good girl. But don’t let the wolf boy see you. He tried to make me tell. Don’t let him see you.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Kitty soothingly. ‘He can’t see me.’ She helped Miss Gordon onto the bed. The old lady was bony and fragile, and Kitty could feel her trembling.

  ‘He’ll never find it,’ Miss Gordon mumbled. ‘And Father’s gone now. He has gone, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Oh yes, he’s gone.’ Did she mean her father or the wolf boy?

  Kitty wondered how to broach the subject that was on her own mind. ‘Did the wolf boy want your . . . your . . . the thing your husband gave you?’ she ventured.

  ‘He’s always wanted it!’ Miss Gordon clutched her arm, her eyes staring. ‘He’s at me and at me. But I won’t tell!’

  ‘Listen,’ started Kitty. ‘I think your treasure might be in danger. Maybe I can help—’

  ‘Shhhh! They’re listening.’

  Kitty looked around nervously.

  ‘Best not to talk about it, dear.’ Miss Gordon took the bouquet from Kitty and buried her face in it. ‘The lovely flowers. Mother had freesias.’

  ‘I’ll put them in a vase for you.’

  Kitty went out into the corridor. A door opposite led into a sort of kitchen. She found a glass jar and filled it with water.

  ‘Here you are!’ She arranged the flowers and put them on the locker by the bed. They made the grey room almost cheerful. Miss Gordon smiled, but there were tears in her eyes.

  ‘I don’t want the wolf boy here,’ she said. ‘Tell them not to let him in.’

  ‘I’ll tell them.’ Kitty took the frail hand in hers.

  ‘Father knew all about it. It was up here.’

  She tapped the side of her snowy head. The sparse hair stood out like feathers.

  ‘They all looked up to him, you know. Father knew where everything was. But then the canary died, and they brought another one, and it died too. All the yellow canaries.’

  She drew a daffodil from the vase and held it against her face.

  ‘The wolf boy can’t go there, you know. It’s safe. It really is safe.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Kitty patted Miss Gordon’s hand. ‘Please don’t cry.’ She saw again the flying rubble, the cloud of dust that the wreckers would make. How could she tell Miss Gordon about that? Here in the nursing home, with the treetops to screen Tarcoola from view, the old lady need never know that her house was gone. But Kitty had to save the treasure!

  A nurse came in and bustled over to the bed.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘She’s upset,’ admitted Kitty.

  ‘Don’t let him come back!’ pleaded the old lady.

  ‘Oh dear, she’s right off the air today,’ observed the nurse. ‘You’d better go, love.’

  ‘Okay.’ Kitty moved reluctantly towards the door. The nurse came with her, as though to escort her off the premises. ‘There’s someone called the wolf boy, you see,’ Kitty explained. ‘I think she’s scared of him.’

  ‘Wolf boy, bogeyman,’ scoffed the nurse. ‘It’s all in her mind.’ She tapped her head meaningfully.

  ‘Has she had a visitor?’ persisted Kitty.

  ‘Only Mr Buckingham,’ said the nurse. ‘You can’t call him the bogeyman! He was mayor a couple of years ago. She’s lucky he takes an interest in her.’

  ‘What sort of interest?’ asked Kitty.

  ‘Pays all the extras here,’ said the nurse. ‘This private room, for a start. He’s no relation, either – just does it out of kindness. They found her homeless, you know. Sleeping rough in some ruined house. I’m surprised they didn’t put her in a mental hospital.’

  ‘She’s not mad!’ said Kitty indignantly.

  ‘Course not,’ conceded the nurse. ‘She’s a dear old thing. Good as gold most of the time. But she’s certainly out of it today!’

  Kitty went slowly down the stairs and out into the street. Mr Buckingham. She would have to ask her parents if they knew who he was. She remembered a Samantha Buckingham who was at her school for a while, in Martin’s year – a pretty girl, but a real snob.

  There was a white car parked outside the Home with a man leaning against it, smoking. He was tall and thin, and his red hair glinted in the sun. As Kitty emerged, the man ground out his cigarette and got into the car. She heard the engine start up.

  Sweetheart was also there, tied to a lamp-post.

  ‘Hello, Sweetheart!’ said Kitty, offering her hand. The dog snuffled and slobbered at it, her tail thumping. Kitty looked around to see Cec emerge from the building, spruced up in a clean shirt and a fraying tie.

  ‘Hello, Cec!’ she called.

  ‘Hello, little lady!’ Cec made his way over to her. ‘Just been to see Ruby Walker. She won’t last much longer, poor old soul.’

  ‘I’ll take Sweetheart.’ Kitty untied the dog and took the leash in her hand. Sweetheart lumbered into motion, pointing unerringly towards home.

  The white car roared off with a screech of tyres.

  ‘Flamin’ idiots!’ said Cec. ‘ ’Scuse my French.’

  ‘I’ve been researching local history,’ said Kitty as they walked. ‘Did you know that there were Japanese submarines right here in the Harbour during the war, blowing things up?’

  ‘Well now, Win’s the one to tell you about that. She hid under the table, her and her sisters. They had a fine old time of it.’

  ‘Really? Win?’

  Kitty didn’t fancy asking Cec’s wife about submarines or anything else. For one thing, she would have to go into the house, which was dark and smelled strongly of dog, cabbage, urine and other things she
couldn’t identify and didn’t want to. For another thing, she had never quite got over her childish fear of Win. It was Martin’s fault. He used to think it was funny to tell her that Win was an old witch who ate little children, and that was why she was so fat.

  ‘Oh yes, Win was born in that house of ours. Me, I’ve only been here since we got married.’

  ‘So you didn’t know the person who committed suicide in the Haunted House – Mr Wolf ?’ ventured Kitty. ‘Would Win have known him?’

  ‘Wouldn’t think so. He was a Jew, you see. From – what’s that place? – Checker-something. Win’s Church of England.’

  ‘And what about his wife?’

  ‘I can remember some sort of to-do about that after the war. There was some lady who thought the first wife had been killed over there in Europe, but it turned out she’d been in America all along. Win was quite upset about it, for some reason.’

  ‘So Win did know them?’

  ‘She didn’t say much about it. Go and ask her, if you like.’

  Kitty could see she wasn’t going to get any more information out of Cec. She handed over Sweetheart’s leash at the corner and trudged home, lost in thought.

  ANDREA hung around the checkouts at the supermarket for a while until her mother noticed her.

  ‘Hey, sweetie!’ Her mother looked around quickly. ‘Make it fast, you know what bloody Dean’ll say if he sees us.’

  The woman clad in business clothes who was unloading her trolley onto the conveyor gave a little sniff of disapproval. Andrea’s mother glanced at her.

  ‘God forbid that I should do my parenting in the boss’s time,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ said Andrea. ‘I just need a bit of money. I have to go to Leichhardt, to the library.’

  ‘Just grab my bag. It’s by my feet.’

  Andrea dived under the counter. Her mother watched her with one eye as she passed the woman’s goods rapidly over the scanner.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. Take ten dollars, love. The library? What’s this for?’

  ‘It’s a school thing. Thanks, Mum.’

  She beat a hasty retreat as the shift supervisor came out of a back room, looking askance at her mother.

  The bus to Leichhardt was slow, meandering through back streets and going around in circles. She had been hoping to see something that was obviously a library, but finally, reluctantly, she realised that she would have to ask the driver.

  ‘It’s in the Italian Forum,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you when to get off.’

  When she got there, Andrea realised that she had been to the Italian Forum before. On the way in there was a row of little shops, one of them specialising in masks. The exaggerated faces were decorated with jewels, brilliant colours, glitter and feathers, some with long, bird-like noses. She could not imagine what sort of people would buy them, and where they would wear them.

  She wandered past a fountain. From one of the tables nearby came a peal of laughter and she flushed, imagining it was directed at her. The sound came from a noisy group of girls in private-school uniform, eating gelato from little silver dishes. There was one she vaguely recognised. What was her name? Vanessa? Samantha, that was it.

  As Andrea stepped back out of sight she noticed a sign pointing to the library.

  A grey-haired man sat at a desk. Andrea approached him confidently, flashing Kitty’s library card.

  ‘I’m looking for information from the nineteen-forties, like stuff that happened in Balmain that might have been in the papers. Could you please tell me what you’ve got?’

  ‘Sorry, we don’t have anything like that.’

  ‘But the librarian at Balmain said you had all the local history.’

  ‘We don’t have anything going back that far. The local papers weren’t being published then. Your best bet is to go to the State Library and look at the old Sydney Morning Heralds.’

  ‘Well, do you have any information about people called Gordon? Or Wolf?’ Had she really come all this way for nothing? She felt like grabbing this smug man and giving him a good shake.

  ‘Try the internet.’

  Andrea turned abruptly and nearly collided with one of the girls she had seen outside.

  ‘Excuse me.’ She brushed past the girl, who gazed curiously after her.

  Andrea walked through the library and out into the plaza. People were still strolling in the late-afternoon sunshine, sitting at tables drinking coffee, chatting on mobile phones.

  She saw herself going back and telling Kitty that the whole expedition had proved a waste of time, that there was no information to be had. She thought of the scanty notes that she had made on Clarissa Gordon, and the deadline Miss Tenniel had given her, coming up fast, and the phone call Miss Tenniel would make to her father, and the conversation they would have about her. She could imagine all these scenes as though she was watching a movie, and somehow it was a movie about someone else’s life. It was almost as sad as Miss Gordon’s life. But it didn’t have to be.

  She went back into the library and found the computer that was used for booking internet time. To her surprise, she only had to wait a few minutes for a terminal. While she was waiting, she scribbled a list of all the things she wanted to search for: Wolf suicide, Wolf Gordon Balmain, bombs Sydney World War II, dipthiria – could that be how you spelled it?

  After a few dead ends she struck gold in an old newspaper report. ‘Japanese attack Sydney Harbour!’ read the headline.

  The article described, in words and pictures, the night of 31 May 1942: a night of drama and chaos, when three miniature Japanese submarines, each with a two-man crew, slipped into Sydney Harbour with the intention of doing as much damage as possible before being spotted and destroyed.

  It was a pretty sad story. The submarines didn’t have radar or proper periscopes, so they kept having to surface and risk being seen, which of course they were. Each submarine had just two torpedoes, which they were supposed to fire at the best targets they could find. They then had a very rough plan to find their way back to their mother submarines, but nobody really expected this to work, and it didn’t. None of the crew members survived – in fact one lot blew themselves up rather than be captured – and it all seemed pointless.

  ANDREA printed the whole story, then moved on to her other subjects. The two hours passed in a flash, then the computer abruptly logged off. She stood, stretched and gathered her printouts and scribbled notes. The library was deserted, and outside in the plaza it was getting dark.

  But when Andrea got to the bus she found a stout old woman planted in the doorway, one foot on the footpath and one foot on the bottom step, filling the entrance.

  ‘It’s supposed to be one of them kneeling buses,’ she was saying.

  ‘Not on this route, lady,’ said the driver, apparently not for the first time.

  ‘They said there’d be a kneeling bus. I can’t get up them steps. I’ve got a bad leg.’

  ‘Look, missus, d’you want to just wait for the next bus?’

  ‘You said not on this route,’ said the old woman sharply. ‘You just want to get rid of me.’

  Andrea peeped past the woman to the driver, who looked reasonably big and strong. ‘Can’t you just help her on?’ she asked.

  ‘Regulations,’ he shrugged. ‘Health and safety. If I do me back or something, I wouldn’t be able to claim.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Andrea considered pushing, but she didn’t fancy getting her hands under that bulging bottom. Instead, she squeezed past and onto the bus. Shoving her folder of papers under her arm, she swung her schoolbag onto her back, turned and took a firm grip on the woman’s arm. With a tremendous heave, she managed to get the woman up the steps and onto the bus, where they collapsed together onto the front seats as the vehicle lurched into motion. Andrea’s papers scattered over the floor.

  Only then did Andrea realise she’d been holding on to Cec’s wife, Win. Win was usually parked in front of the TV in their dark little house, glued to
the sports program.

  ‘Thank you dear, thank you so much!’ Win wheezed as Andrea scrambled around, collecting her papers. ‘What a good girl you are. You’re that little girl from Christina Street, aren’t you? Very helpful little girl. I always say that kids these days . . . Well! Will you look at that!’

  She had picked up the printout about the submarines and was reading it with fascination, her mouth hanging open.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ she said. ‘What a night that was!’

  ‘Were you around when it happened?’ asked Andrea.

  ‘Ha! We were all under the table, my sisters and me. Boom! We found out later they were right over the other side, but it sounded much closer. Kept on going for hours. We were that scared!’ She sighed. ‘Poor little Clarissa. That was the night Josef Woolf . . . you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, you’re just a kid,’ Win patted Andrea’s shoulder soothingly. ‘Shouldn’t talk about such things.’

  ‘No, it’s all right.’ Andrea was struggling to stay calm, to be nice. Kitty, Kitty, I need you now, she was thinking. She touched the old woman’s squishy knee.

  ‘Please tell me what happened.’

  ‘Well – I didn’t know meself until much later. I was only a little thing at the time. It was Vi told me eventually.’

  ‘Vi?’

  ‘She was the oldest. She’s passed on now. There were five of us. All girls. Poor old Dad. People used to say it was because of the soap factory.’

  ‘So what did Vi tell you? About Mr Wolf?’

  ‘Yes. Woolf with two Os, you know. He was from one of those funny European countries. They’re all different now.’

  ‘And what happened to him?’

  ‘Seems he was that scared with all the noise, he must’ve thought the Japs were coming for sure. Who knows what he thought. Anyway, poor chap shot himself.’ She shuddered, sending all her chins trembling. ‘Don’t know how Clarissa slept through it, but she musta done. Didn’t find him till the next morning.’

  ‘Oh!’ Andrea was lost for words. She knew that Miss Gordon hadn’t slept through it. She would have been down in the bomb shelter, and he must have gone up to the house to kill himself. Andrea imagined the scene as Miss Gordon crept upstairs in the morning, searching room by room for her beloved Mr Woolf.