Sydney Bridge Upside Down by David Ballantyne Page B

before I put on my pyjamas.’
    ‘I’ll go after him,’ I said.
    ‘Just wait for Caroline,’ Dad said.
    When she got back, her yellow dress was splashed with rain, she was brushing her hair with her fingers.
    ‘Sorry, Caroline,’ Dad said. ‘I should have given you the oilskin.’
    ‘Don’t worry, Uncle Frank,’ she said. ‘Not many drops hit me.’ She smiled at us. ‘Good night, everybody. Thank you for the marvellous welcome.’
    Then she did what I had been hoping she would do. She kissed us. She kissed Cal first, then me, then Dad. My turn seemed to last longer than Cal’s, but I didn’t get a chanceto look through her eyes—because she shut them. When she got to Dad, his crutch slipped and he had to hold her tightly to keep his balance. It was unusual for Dad’s crutch to slip.
    Cal and I raced to the kitchen. I let Cal go outside first.
    Later, when Cal and I were in our pyjamas and bouncing on the bed, I remembered that Dad had looked dreamy as he crossed the kitchen to the spare room, he hadn’t noticed me watching.

4

    T HE FUNNY thing is I forgot what Caroline said about Sam Phelps. I mean, I forgot for more than two days. Then I remembered on her third morning with us. It was just after we had been running around with nothing on that I remembered. We had been running from her room to our room and back again, up and down the passage, in and out of the kitchen, and we were getting puffed, I was not surprised when Caroline dived on to her bed, pulled a sheet over herself and said from the pillow that she’d had enough. Cal and I didn’t mind stopping; we’d had our share of smacks.
    Cal, who was still shy about Caroline seeing him wearing nothing, went off to get dressed. I sat on Caroline’s bed, near the end.
    ‘I’ve remembered something,’ I said, looking straight ahead in case she sat up and let the sheet slip and thought I was staring. ‘Remember what you said about Sam Phelps the other night? About him being handsome.’
    ‘I remember,’ Caroline said, keeping her head on the pillow. ‘Why, Harry?’
    ‘Do you still think he’s handsome?’ I asked. ‘Now you’ve seen him again.’
    ‘Don’t you think so, Harry?’ Her head stayed on the pillow, she spoke sleepily.
    ‘What about his scar?’ I asked.
    ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said.
    ‘What about him being grubby?’ I asked.
    ‘Being what?’ she said softly.
    ‘Grubby,’ I said.
    ‘What?’ she said, very softly.
    I could tell she was nearly asleep, so I said no more. I guessed I should go and put my clothes on, but I didn’t want to leave her, I wanted to be near her a while longer. I told myself she might suddenly sit up and tell me why she thought Sam Phelps was handsome. I knew she wouldn’t, but it seemed a good excuse for staying there.
    Now she was asleep.
    She likes being in bed, I thought. I remembered how she had said the afternoon after her arrival that she was going into the bedroom to change her dress, and how when I looked in there half an hour later she was asleep on the bed, still wearing the dress she had worn for our climb up the small hill across the road from our house. She had gone to bed pretty early the past two nights too, even though Dad wanted to keep telling her about his city experiences (he kept describing buildings and streets he thought she knew, but she didn’t know many of them, maybe because Dad was talking of how the city was a long time before). I alsoremembered that she had not wanted to climb the stairs at the works yesterday because she said she was feeling rather tired, she would prefer to climb them another day, quite early if we didn’t mind. I had thought for a moment she might be scared of those ruins and was recalling what Dad had told her about the accidents that had happened there and how dangerous it was (with a warning look at us). Then I decided she was not scared, it was just that she was a city girl and not yet used to running and climbing the way we were. And