The Tunnels of Tarcoola Read online

  ‘Ah, that was all a long time ago.’ Win patted her hand. ‘I shouldn’t have told you.’

  She settled back and seemed to fall into a doze. Andrea took out one of her printouts and scribbled notes on the back, looking up with a start as Win started painfully hauling herself to her feet.

  ‘This your stop too, dear?’

  ‘No. Ummm . . . Yeah, sure.’

  The bus driver looked the other way while the old lady struggled to get out. Andrea couldn’t stand it, especially when Win had been so unexpectedly helpful. She jumped down from the bus and held Win’s hands as the old lady tentatively put first one foot then another onto terra firma.

  It didn’t end there. Andrea was about to dart away but Win, clearly tired and a little shaky, took her arm, so there was nothing for it but to set off at a snail’s pace for the old lady’s house, mercifully not too far away.

  ‘Those doctors,’ Win muttered. ‘Sending me all the way to Leichhardt for me leg. They don’t know what it does to a poor old woman. And I’ve still got to get Cec his tea, and something for Sweetheart. I’ve got a nice bit of casserole left. That’ll do him. Or would she like it? I’ll make a steak-and-kidney pie tomorrow. Clarissa liked that.’

  Suddenly Andrea tuned in. ‘You cooked for Clarissa?’

  Win stopped dead. ‘Now I didn’t say that, did I?’

  They started walking again.

  ‘I’ve met Clarissa,’ said Andrea. ‘My friend goes to see her, and sometimes I go too. She’s a really sweet old lady.’

  ‘My sister Vi loved her,’ said Win. ‘Vi was what they called a Tarcoola girl. Used to work at Josef Woolf’s house. There’s none of them left now.’ She sighed. ‘I didn’t really know Clarissa meself, but I was always happy to take the bits and pieces to her. I did it for Vi, really, and the other Tarcoola girls.’

  ‘But when was this? You said you were only little when Mr Woolf died.’

  ‘That’s right. The other Mrs Woolf kicked Clarissa out after the war, and she disappeared for a while. Went off housekeeping somewhere, the girls thought. We started bringing her the food, sort of on the quiet, when she came back.’

  ‘How long did she stay in the house?’

  ‘Oh, years, on and off. Only the Tarcoola girls knew she was there. They looked after her. She got caught eventually and they put her in the Home.’

  They were at Win’s gate by now. Win pulled Andrea close.

  ‘You won’t mention this to Cec, will you?’ she whispered. ‘He’s funny about some things. Trespassing, and that. He never did know she was there.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Andrea gave her a little hug. ‘And thank you so much for telling me.’

  The old lady hobbled up the path to her house. As soon as her key scraped in the lock, a frantic barking began inside. Andrea turned and ran.

  THE alarm chirped at six o’clock on Friday morning. Andrea grabbed the clock and turned the alarm off before it could sound again. Across the room Celeste cursed and pulled the bedclothes over her head.

  Andrea picked up her books and tiptoed to the kitchen. The table was cluttered with dirty plates, newspapers and coffee cups. She pushed them to one side, making a space in which to work. Holding her nose, she picked up the brimming ashtray and put it outside the back door.

  The draft was finished. Andrea laid out some sheets of paper, took the new black pen she had bought, and began to write in her clear, round running-writing. As she started each new page she examined her stock of illustrations – the copy of Miss Gordon’s photograph, the printouts from the library, the photos she had taken of the house and the bomb shelter – and worked out how to incorporate each one into the layout.

  Andrea wrote steadily on while the pink light creeping through the blinds gradually intensified to gold. She finished with a flourish and then read the whole thing through to herself.

  THE GHOST THAT WASN’T

  a Historical Biography by Andrea McKinley-Brown

  Clarissa Gordon was born on the 2nd of January 1919 in a small house in Christina Street, Balmain. She was not born in a hospital because her parents were poor. The house where she was born is renovated now (see photo) but it still only has two bedrooms, so it must have been very small then, and Clarissa’s mother had nine children, she really had more than nine children, but some of them died when they were babies. A lot of babies died in those days especially in poor families like the Gordons. One died from diphtheria that babies don’t get these days because they are all immunised. One died of Spanish Flu in the 1918 pandemic that spread to nearly every part of the world (see Wikipedia extract).

  Mr Gordon used to work in a coal mine, but they closed the pit after a while and then he worked on the wharves but there was precious little to be had there when the depression started. Mr Gordon couldn’t go on the wallaby because he had so many children and Mrs Gordon couldn’t work either with so many children so Clarissa had to go out to work and she went into Service she was probably about twelve. Being in Service she was a servant in a big house where she had to get up before dawn and work all day.

  When Clarissa grew up she was very beautiful (see photo). She met a rich man called Mr Woolf who fell madly in love with her. Mr Woolf had just come from Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) because there was the Second World War in Europe and he was scared. He bought a big house in Birchgrove called Tarcoola (see photo) and a factory next to it and he asked Clarissa to marry him and gave her lots of presents. Little did she know he was already married. They had a big wedding and went to the Great Barrier Reef for their honeymoon. Clarissa was very happy being the mistress of Tarcoola and being Mrs Woolf. They lived well and had parties, but Mr Woolf was still worried about the war. He built an air-raid shelter under his house he was so scared. He put in gas masks (see photo) and food and books in German.

  On the 31st of May, 1942, three Japanese submarines invaded Sydney Harbour (see newspaper report). They torpedoed an old ferry called the Kuttabul and killed nineteen sailors (see photo). The water police chased them around the Harbour and finally blew one of them out of the water. All the people who lived near the harbour could hear the explosions and see the searchlights. The noise was so loud it shook their houses and broke their windows. Some people were very scared and hid under the table. Mr Woolf got extremely upset thinking the Japanese invasion was starting and it was just as bad as Europe which he had left to get away from the war so he took his wife down to their bomb shelter and told her to stay there. But then he got more and more depressed and finally he went up to the house and committed suicide. He didn’t leave a note and didn’t tell his wife he was going to do it. He made her stay in the shelter and she didn’t know what had happened to him until the next day.

  Clarissa was very upset and in a State of Shock, but she carried on living in the house and looking after everything. But a few years later Mr Woolf’s first wife turned up she had been in America and she came back and said the house and the factory belonged to her. This was true because if a man doesn’t make a will his wife gets everything (see photocopy from Year 11 Legal Studies textbook). Mr Woolf should of made a will because he knew Clarissa wasn’t his real wife, or he should of given Clarissa some money of her own, but he didn’t get round to it so she had a really bad time and after living the life of a rich lady and the mistress of Tarcoola now she was poor again.

  After the real Mrs Woolf came back and took everything, Clarissa was too ashamed to go back to her family, because people in those days thought bigamy was a big disgrace even though it wasn’t her fault. So she just disappeared she probably went and worked as a housekeeper somewhere far away. The real Mrs Woolf went back to America, nobody came to live in Tarcoola and the house got more and more wrecked. Years later, in the 1990s, they closed the factory.

  BUT nobody knew that after many years away Clarissa came back and lived secretly in the house. She used to spend a lot of time looking out the window and daydreaming about the good times she used to have. Sometimes children
saw her there and she looked scary because her face was all wrinkled by now and her beauty gone and naturally they thought she was a ghost and everybody called Tarcoola the Haunted House. The old ladies in the area who had been the servants at Tarcoola called Tarcoola girls used to bring her food (sorry I cannot disclose my source).

  When Clarissa couldn’t hide any more they put her in the Sunset Home (see photo), and she is still living there today.

  Tarcoola is still empty and wrecked and some people still think it’s haunted and if nobody stops them the developers will pull it down and build town houses there even though the house is very old and has Historical Significance (see newspaper report).

  THE END

  When Andrea had finished the last page, she took the folder she had found under Celeste’s bed, wiped the grubby plastic with a damp kitchen sponge, and dried it with a clean tea towel. Then she placed her work carefully inside and packed it into her bag.

  A hacking cough announced the arrival of her mother, who groped her way blearily into the kitchen and, apparently from memory, filled the kettle and plugged it in.

  ‘You’re up early, love. Feeling all right?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Andrea. ‘The garbos woke me, banging the bins, and I couldn’t get back to sleep.’

  ‘Well, get yourself some breakfast.’ Her mother lit up a cigarette. ‘Where the hell’s that ashtray gone?’

  HISTORY was the last period of the day. Miss Tenniel arrived armed to the teeth with a class set of textbooks and a stack of printouts, all of which she distributed with the help of some of the keener students. Andrea stuck out her tongue at Martin as he delivered a printout to her desk.

  ‘Watch out!’ he hissed. ‘You’ll get detention if you’re not careful.’

  Andrea grinned and picked up her sheet. ‘Aw, Miss!’ she exclaimed loudly. ‘Fifteen questions. It’s Friday afternoon!’

  ‘That’s why I’m giving you such easy work,’ said Miss Tenniel calmly. ‘Now class, I expect you to finish at least the first ten questions this period.’

  At the end of the lesson Andrea bounded out of the room with the front-runners, as usual. Halfway down the corridor she stopped and slapped her forehead dramatically.

  ‘Forgot my pen!’ she announced, heading back to the classroom.

  Miss Tenniel was still packing up her papers. Andrea sidled up and placed her assignment on the desk. She turned to flee.

  ‘Wait a minute, Andrea.’ Miss Tenniel picked up the folder and started turning pages. ‘This looks very interesting!’ She read for a while. Andrea shuffled her feet.

  ‘Is this all your own work, Andrea?’

  Andrea flushed. ‘I don’t copy, Miss.’

  ‘Of course not! I didn’t mean that. But you seem to have done a lot of work. Where did you get these photos?’

  ‘I took some, and the old lady gave me that one.’

  Miss Tenniel flicked though some more pages. ‘Well, Andrea, you’ve set yourself quite a standard here!’ She smiled. ‘Do you think you could do more of this kind of work?’

  ‘I dunno,’ muttered Andrea. ‘I might.’

  ‘You might. Well, we’ll see how it goes.’ Miss Tenniel packed the assignment into her satchel. ‘And if you have any problems, Andrea, with the work, or . . . or at home, you can always come to me, you know.’

  ‘All right. Thanks, Miss.’

  Andrea hurried along the deserted corridor and out into the school grounds. Only a few stragglers were left, and there was no one she knew in the yard. She took a short cut across the soccer field and went out the side gate, which the caretaker was about to lock.

  As she started walking briskly along the footpath she heard a car engine purr into life. She was wondering what Miss Tenniel would think of the bit about the submarines. And should she have put in that stuff about the will?

  She was about to cross a side street when a white car nosed in front of her and stopped, blocking her way. A man got out of the passenger seat. He was short and stocky, with dark hair growing low on his forehead.

  ‘Hullo, love.’ He had a flat New Zealand accent. ‘Wanna earn some money?’

  Andrea glanced in disbelief at the fifty-dollar note he was holding in front of her face.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said stiffly, edging to one side. The footpath was narrow, and there was not enough room to pass the man without getting uncomfortably close to him.

  ‘Come on, get in.’ His tone was sharper now. ‘We only wanna talk to you.’

  Andrea glanced into the car. The windows were tinted and the red-haired man at the wheel kept his face turned away, but there was something definitely menacing about his upper arm, heavily muscled and wreathed in tattoos.

  The New Zealander was still blocking her way, waiting for an answer. There was no one else in the street. Andrea made up her mind what to do.

  ‘Let me past!’ she said clearly, but at the same time she took a few steps backwards and tightened her grip on her schoolbag. The man grinned and spread his arms wide, and she spun and ran back the way she had come.

  Andrea was a good runner, and she didn’t expect much trouble from the short-legged New Zealander, but the other man was more of a worry. If he decided to get out of the car and chase her she might be in trouble. However, to her relief, she heard the engine start up, and much revving as he tried to turn the car in the narrow street. This would buy her some time.

  She ran hard, her bag bumping uncomfortably against her side. She could hear pounding footsteps behind her, getting closer.

  Just past the school there was a dunny path, one of a network of narrow back lanes behind the terrace houses. This one led through several turns to other lanes, and eventually came out in another street. Even if she didn’t manage to lose the New Zealander, Andrea was confident that she could use that route to get away from the car.

  Andrea ducked into the dunny path at the last possible minute. She heard the New Zealander thunder past, and the sudden silence as he stopped, trying to take in what had happened. Then she was away, flying down the narrow lane, twisting round the bends.

  She shot out into the next street and glanced quickly both ways. She groaned. The white car was crawling across the intersection to her right. Luckily it was a fair distance away – she was much closer to the other corner. The New Zealander was panting behind her, so she had no choice. She raced across the road, her breath rasping painfully now, and round the corner to the left. The blocks in this street were short, and she had a good chance of getting into the next street before they could see which way she had gone.

  Andrea was concentrating so hard on her escape that she had almost reached the next corner before things fell into place in her mind. David lived in this street.

  There it was, a two-storey terrace house with a bare-branched frangipani tree at the front. She ran up the path and pounded on the door. She could hear the car turning into the street. Any minute now it would come past, and they would see her.

  David himself answered the door. He stared at Andrea.

  ‘Quick. Someone’s after me.’ She pushed past him. ‘Come on, shut the door.’

  He shut it. Andrea pressed herself against the wall of the hallway, panting. David found his voice.

  ‘Who’s after you?’

  ‘How would I know? Two men.’ Andrea was out of breath. ‘I can’t go out there.’

  She looked along the hallway. Through one door the dining room was visible, with a glowing polished table and richly patterned rugs. At the end she could glimpse a living room, late afternoon sunlight slanting onto colourful cushions and piles of books.

  ‘Come up.’

  She followed him up the stairs. David removed some clothes from an armchair for her, then sat down on a straight-backed chair in front of a computer. Andrea sidled over to the window and peeped through the curtains, but all she could see was the brick wall of the house next door.

  ‘What happened?’ persisted David.

  ‘They were scary.’ She came b
ack and flopped into the armchair. ‘There was a car. They tried to get me to go with them. One of them got out and chased me. I didn’t want them to find out where I live.’

  ‘Did they see you come in here?’

  ‘Maybe. I was running. I don’t think they came around the corner in time.’

  David went into the front room and she could see him peering through the slatted blinds. He returned to Andrea.

  ‘What sort of car?’

  ‘Just a white car. Fairly big. Just a car.’

  ‘There are two white cars parked out there. Can’t see if there’s anyone in them. And a white car sort of cruised past while I was looking.’

  ‘Maybe that was them, looking for me.’

  ‘Hell, Andrea, every second car is white.’

  ‘Don’t you believe me?’ she challenged. ‘Do you want me to go?’

  ‘Course not. Maybe we should ring the police.’

  ‘Police?’ Andrea was scornful. ‘They won’t do anything.’

  ‘But they tried to kidnap you. They’re dangerous.’

  ‘There are lots of men like that out there,’ Andrea told him. ‘They tried to pick up my sister once, but the police didn’t believe her. You just have to be really careful.’

  ‘Oh.’ David sounded a bit shocked. ‘You’d better stay here, then. Wait until it’s safe.’ He turned to his computer.

  Andrea stared at her feet for a while, brooding. Then she watched David as he rapidly dragged things around the screen.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m making this city, see? I have to build roads, and bridges, and factories for the people to work in. But I can’t let it get too polluted.’

  ‘How long have you been at it?’

  ‘About fifty years,’ he answered, not looking up as he zoomed in on some tiny, unidentifiable object.