Free Sydney Bridge Upside Down by David Ballantyne Page A

It was a small kiss.
    ‘There,’ she said after it. ‘Good morning again, Harry.’
    She ran to the bathroom while I was taking a deep breath. I went to the kitchen and checked that there were still ten bottles of ginger beer in the sink cupboard. Should I offer her one? Or should I wait till we got back from the walk?
    Dibs Kelly turned up just then, so that settled it. I would not mention the ginger beer.
    I had not seen Dibs since I’d chased him by the railway line yesterday, but he didn’t look as if he remembered how angry I had been, he looked friendly, ready for fun. He was grinning.
    ‘I got something for the cave,’ he said. He brought a square biscuit tin from behind his back. ‘How about this?’
    ‘What do we want a tin for?’ I asked.
    ‘Not only a tin,’ he said. He took off the lid, showed me what was inside—a small paraffin lamp, glass funnel and all.
    ‘Hey, that’s good,’ I said. ‘Where did you get that? Did you pinch it?’
    ‘Dad gave it to me,’ Dibs said. ‘Too small for him, he reckons. So we can use it to light the back of the cave, eh?’
    ‘Be all right for night-time,’ I said. ‘We can use the cave at night.’ I thought about it. ‘If I can dodge Dad,’ I said. ‘Or if he’s away some night and there’s only Cal and me at home.’ I recalled there were nights, once every month or so, when Dad and Mr Kelly drove in the Reo to Bonnie Brae, to smoke concerts or something. We could go to the cave on one of those nights. Good old Dibs!
    ‘Coming up then?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to leave this at our house. One of the kids will find it and bust it.’
    ‘We’ll go up there this morning,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if Caroline wants to come.’
    ‘I don’t mind,’ Dibs said. He ran his tongue over his lips, but I ignored that.
    I had heard Caroline going from the bathroom to her room and I guessed she would have had time to put on the lipstick and anything else she wanted to put on. Sure enough, when I reached her room she was just turning from the dressing-table mirror. She had lipstick on. She was also wearing a pair of brown flat-heeled shoes.
    ‘What say we leave the swamp till another time?’ I said. ‘Would you like to see a cave today?’
    ‘Is it far, Harry?’ asked Caroline.
    ‘Not far,’ I said. ‘No further than the wharf, going round the back way. It’s not a very steep track. It won’t make you tired, Caroline. And you can see the wharf and the bay from up there.’
    ‘That sounds nice,’ she said. ‘We might even have time to call on Mr Phelps, do you think?’
    ‘Well, he’s usually busy about now,’ I said. ‘He stores things in the woolshed for farmers. They have different days for collecting stuff. He keeps things there for the store too—’
    ‘Anyway, we’ll have a nice walk,’ Caroline said.
    Dibs was waiting for us in the kitchen. If he expected Caroline to kiss him, he fell in; all she did was give him a smile. She didn’t care who she smiled at.
    I looked down the yard as we left in case Cal was there; he wasn’t. Served him right that he was missing this fun, he shouldn’t have dodged wiping the breakfast dishes.
    I saw Susan Prosser on her front veranda when we were up on the road, but pretended I hadn’t seen her. She couldn’t be studying very hard. Unless the book in her hand was a textbook.
    ‘You know what Susan Prosser reckons?’ I said to Dibs when we were down the road a bit. ‘She reckons Mr Dalloway won’t be here next term.’
    Caroline, who was walking between us, gave me a look when I said Mr Dalloway’s name, but she did not speak.
    ‘Susan Prosser doesn’t know,’ Dibs said.
    ‘She’s dippy,’ I said. ‘She makes up things.’
    ‘Mr Dalloway would have told us,’ Dibs said. ‘He wouldn’t tell her and not tell us.’
    ‘She says she stays inside because she’s studying,’ I said. I glanced at Caroline, but she was looking at the works—or maybe the railway line.
    ‘Susan Prosser