A Small Free Kiss in the Dark Page 6

  ‘Dreamland,’ said Billy looking at the postcard in Max’s book. ‘Great choice, Max. It’s near the beach.’

  Dreamland was a fun park. The entrance looked like a man’s head, with a wide-open mouth full of big, white teeth. There were palm trees and blue skies in the picture and a Ferris wheel. It looked like somewhere you might go for a holiday.

  Billy looked up at the clock on the wall as though we were going to catch a train. It was eight-thirty. ‘I’ve walked there before,’ he said. ‘We could probably make it in a few hours.’

  The first part of our journey was underground. There were stacks of other people walking in the same direction as us. It wasn’t light enough to see them properly. I imagined we were an army; an army of old people, of mothers and fathers, of children and babies and of people who didn’t belong. The Army of the Third Side, unarmed because we didn’t believe in war.

  I wondered if all the others were going to Dreamland, and I listened, but they only talked about what had already happened. At the end of the underground the metal tracks stretched out in front of us, dead electricity wires striped the pigeon-grey sky and rain dribbled down on us.

  ‘Is this the way to Dreamland?’ Max asked Billy.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you been there before?’

  ‘Yes, I told you.’

  ‘How many times?’

  ‘Lots of times.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘A long way.’

  In the beginning we went fast because we wanted to get to Dreamland. The rain made the metal tracks slippery, so we walked on the stones beside them. When Max got tired I let him sit on top of my case, but bits of rock kept jamming the wheels, and even though Billy was slow I kept getting further and further behind. All the other people on the track had passed us a long time back. I guess we’d been walking for at least a couple of hours when the rain started pelting down. Billy turned around and shouted to us. I couldn’t hear what he said, but he was pointing up ahead. He waited till Max and me caught up.

  ‘There’s a tunnel a bit further along,’ he said. ‘We’ll take a break when we get there.’

  Orange flames flickered in the gloom. ‘A fire,’ I said. ‘Maybe someone’s already in there.’

  Billy made us wait and went ahead. After a few seconds he waved to Max and me, and we knew it was safe.

  ‘Got any smokes?’ asked the man in the tunnel when we were all inside. Billy only had one cigarette left, so they took it in turns. We crouched around the old man’s fire while the rain poured down outside. Steam came off our coats and out of our mouths, and I thought about peace pipes and American Indians and Chief Seattle.

  ‘Most folks don’t stop,’ the man said when they got down to the brown part of the cigarette. ‘They’re all in a hurry to get where they’re goin’. I hear they’re headin’ north. They reckon there’s a place for people wiv nowhere else to go. You headed that way?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Where you from?’

  ‘City, Queen’s Elbows.’

  ‘Yeah? Queen’s Elbows. Been there meself a few times. Nice place.’

  ‘Not any more,’ said Billy. ‘They flattened it.’

  ‘Yeah? So where you stayin’ now?’

  ‘Here and there,’ said Billy.

  ‘Like me eh? Don’t like to stay in one place too long, ’specially not now. Must be tough with the little bloke, though.’

  He leant his head towards Max and Max did something I didn’t expect. He said, ‘I’m Max and I’m six and this is Billy and Skip.’

  I looked at Billy, but it was too late. Max had made a mistake but it wasn’t his fault; he didn’t know we never told strangers our names, even my running-away name.

  ‘Billy, Skip and Max, pleased to meet youse all,’ the man said. ‘And I’m Albert, Albert Park.’ Then he laughed and he looked like the picture of Dreamland on Max’s postcard, except he didn’t have as many teeth and they were yellowish-brown, not white. As he laughed I realised Albert Park wasn’t his name at all, it was the name of a suburb. He must have thought our names were made-up too, so it didn’t matter about Max’s mistake.

  ‘Fancy a cuppa?’ Albert pulled a dirty rag out of his pocket and wrapped it around his hand, then he reached over the fire and picked up a can of boiling water like he was invincible or something. We shared the rest of yesterday’s muesli bars with Albert and he shared his one tea bag with us. He only had two tin mugs, so we took it in turns and in between he squeezed the tea bag and put it in his pocket.

  ‘What’s in the case, lad?’ Albert asked me.

  ‘Books,’ I said. ‘About famous painters.’

  ‘Skip’s an artist,’ said Billy. ‘He draws beautiful pictures. Why don’t you draw something on Mr Park’s tunnel for him, Skip?’

  Billy and Albert talked quietly while I stared at the sooty walls through the dancing flames. I heard Billy say something about Dreamland and Albert talked about some other place called No-Man’s-Land. Then I heard nothing as I began to draw the wild creatures I saw in my head. I drew buffalo and elk and caribou and wolves, and then I drew God’s red children, which is what Chief Seattle called his people even though they were really a brownish colour. I gave them horses to ride and headdresses made of eagles’ feathers to wear. I gave their horses a prairie, and I put gallop in their legs, wind in their manes and breath in their nostrils. I gave their riders bows and arrows to hunt with. They were precision weapons, because God’s red children only took what they needed. Then I drew red hearts inside all the bodies: in the men and in the animals. The last thing I did was put my hand against the wall and draw around it. That’s like a signature. When I took my eyes away from my drawing I felt surprised I was in a railway tunnel. I don’t know if Albert liked my picture, because it was primitive. That’s what ancient drawings are sometimes called, especially when they’re found on the walls of caves. A railway tunnel isn’t much different from a cave, except it’s open at both ends and most caves are not.

  I could tell that Max liked my picture. ‘Can I draw around my hand?’ he asked and I gave him a piece of chalk. He traced the outline of his hand and wrote his name underneath in big crooked letters. Then he put black stripes across his cheeks with the soot from his fingers, and I promised to look for an eagle’s feather for him.

  After the rain stopped a few people walked by and Billy asked Albert what the time was. Albert peered at his watch. ‘Gettin’ on for eleven-thirty,’ he said.

  ‘We’d better get a move on, then.’

  ‘Remember; you take the left spur to dodge No-Man’s-Land.’

  I didn’t hear what Billy said because Max ran outside and started making Indian war cries and I had to run after him. The people on the tracks ahead of us turned around.

  ‘You’ve gotta be quiet, Max,’ I said, ‘the enemy might be hiding just over the horizon.’

  I said it like it was a game, so Max would play along. I didn’t want him to know how scared I was that my words would come true.

  8

  The Carousel of

  War and Peace

  We came to a fork where the rails curved away in different directions. There were no signposts, only numbers. The people in front of us all went left, but Billy led us the other way, through a deep concrete cutting smothered with graffiti. We walked between the walls, like ants between the pages of a comic. If there’d been no war and we weren’t trying to find someplace safe to stay, I would have stopped and looked at the graffiti, the way people stare at art in galleries.

  The longer we walked the more distant the sounds of fighting became. I couldn’t hear much at all; no voices, no cars, nothing except stones clattering down the steep embankments beside the tracks, and my suitcase wheels bumping over the sleepers. I thought we’d never get to Dreamland. I couldn’t stop thinking Billy might have made a mistake. Maybe we should have gone the way the other people had. Would it be better to turn around and go back? I didn’t dare say anything to Billy.
Every time Max asked him a question, he got grumpier and quieter.

  Sometimes we’d pass a ladder bolted to the wall. I wanted to climb up and have a look. I hated the silence. I wanted to shout, ‘Who’s there?’ I wanted to fill our ears with sound.

  ‘Let’s sing something,’ I said to Max.

  ‘What do you want to sing?’

  ‘Anything.’

  But Billy shushed us with a finger to his lips.

  Max and me were tired of walking and not getting anywhere, and I couldn’t even be bothered looking at the graffiti on the walls. I wished we were back in the library with Cecily and that last night had never happened. When you concentrate on wishing for things you can’t have, you miss out on clues that something good might be just around the corner. I didn’t notice the concrete walls sloping away and I didn’t see the gulls swirling like scraps of paper in the sky, so I was gobsmacked when we walked out of the cutting and saw Dreamland.

  It looked even better than on Max’s postcard. Behind the fun park, a boardwalk edged the yellow sand beside a shallow, sheltered bay.

  ‘Wait here,’ Billy said, so Max and me sat on my case on the little platform, staring at Dreamland. It was one-thirty when I looked at the clock on the other side of the train tracks. It took Billy five minutes to reach the entrance to the fun park. He limped down a steep triangle of grass between the road and the station, crossed the main street and walked along the footpath toward the yawning mouth. We watched him disappear inside and waited, hardly daring to blink in case we missed him. Another five minutes went by and then it was ten and at last Billy was there, waving to us.

  I grabbed Max’s hand and the handle of my case. We ran like crazy down the green hill, looked both ways although there wasn’t a car in sight, darted across the wide black stretch of tar and sprinted along the footpath. When we walked under the big teeth we laughed out loud, we just couldn’t help it. This time Billy didn’t tell us to stop.

  There were plenty of feathers at Dreamland. They were carved on a golden eagle on the carousel. The eagle was on the front of a chariot, with its giant wings spread out. It was bigger than Max.

  ‘It’s a Roman war chariot,’ said Billy, ‘and there’s one on the other side that’s called the peace chariot.’

  Max and me ran around to see. Instead of an eagle on the front, it had a lady with a peaceful look carved on her wooden face. As well as the two chariots, the carousel had sixty-eight horses.

  ‘The theme of the carousel is war and peace,’ Billy said. ‘Look at the cherubs.’ He pointed to a carving of a fat baby angel. ‘Thirty-six cherubs,’ he said, and then he showed us the painted flowers and butterflies. I never heard Billy talk so much before. He knew everything about the Carousel of War and Peace. ‘It’s very old,’ he said. ‘Been here since the year nineteen hundred and twenty-three.’

  Max had already got on one of the horses, but I didn’t. I was waiting to see if Billy would tell us more. I’d got used to not asking questions, and waiting for signs that Billy had something he wanted to say. He was stroking his beard. That was usually a sign. I was right. ‘Wars come and wars go,’ he said. ‘Things change, but the carousel is always here. It reminds people of the good times.’

  ‘Come on, Skip! Get on!’ Max yelled.

  Billy smiled as Max pulled himself up on the platform, so I got on too. I picked a light grey horse with black blotches.

  ‘That’s called a pinto,’ Billy said. It had a red harness and silver horseshoes.

  Max was on a black horse in front of the chariot of war. ‘Let’s be Indians!’ he said and he grabbed the reins and clicked his tongue against his teeth. ‘Giddy up, Midnight!’ he yelled.

  That’s when Billy started acting strange. He put his hands up to his mouth like a loudspeaker and started calling out into the empty fun park like it was crammed full of people. ‘Step right up, boys and girls, and ride the merry-go-round. Two nights only. Don’t miss out. Tell all your friends. Come on now, don’t be shy. The merry’s perfectly safe, mothers and fathers, let your little ones enjoy the ride of a lifetime. Step right up. Get your tickets here! You won’t get better value anywhere. Step this way!’ It was like Billy had been doing this job all his life.

  After he’d finished telling Max and me to hang on tight, Billy sat down in the chariot of peace and took his harmonica out of his pocket. It was small and silver and its name was Hohner. I’d seen that written on the top, among all the looping, swirling patterns. Once, Billy played his Hohner outside St Mary’s. It was Anzac Day. He sat down on the steps and shut his eyes and played. Billy didn’t play for money. If he’d wanted money he would have gone to the mall, where buskers go. I don’t know why he played his music at St Mary’s that day but I wondered if he was like me, and never knew what to say to God, so he played his music instead. Some of the people who went to church that day didn’t go inside. They stayed and listened to Billy instead. It was like a magic spell was on them and they couldn’t leave. Sometimes, when I look at Monet’s paintings, it’s like a spell is on me and I can’t walk away.

  Billy curled his hands around his Hohner. I got ready for the magic. He closed his eyes and started to play. My feet slid into the stirrups, I took the reins in my hands and a shout burst out of me like fireworks. ‘Come away, Captain Moonlight, come away!’ My shout went up and over the Ferris wheel and down the other side. I felt the horse’s powerful muscles move and I thought of the leopard on Archimedes’s chest.

  Max and me didn’t see the grey clouds rolling in because we were having the ride of our lives, galloping over the grassy plains, chasing buffalo and elk and caribou and listening to the wolves howling in the mountains. But Billy did. After a while he wrapped his Hohner in a piece of rag and put it in his pocket. Then everything went back to the way it was. We got off the carousel to look at the other things in Dreamland before the rain came.

  We passed the House of Horrors and Sideshow Alley, where the tin ducks were, and then we looked at the Ferris wheel and the dodgem cars, but I didn’t feel like pretending any more; I wanted to do something real.

  Then Max said, ‘Have you got something we can eat, Billy?’

  Billy looked in his backpack but all we had left was a tin of sardines and some jelly snakes. ‘There are shops up there on the Boulevard,’ he said, pointing. Three flights of concrete steps with metal handrails ran from behind the station to the top of the hill, where we could see a row of houses and shops and more palm trees. ‘We’d better see what we can find before it gets dark.’

  I read the signs outside Dreamland. ‘Steep Gradient. 15 mins to Shopping Centre’, said the one pointing towards the steps. I knew Billy would have trouble. ‘You wait here, Billy, I’ll go,’ I said.

  It didn’t take him long to get back to being grumpy. ‘Since when did you start telling me what to do?’

  ‘I just thought, all those stairs . . . and there’s no one around. I’d be okay.’

  ‘You mean you haven’t seen anyone,’ he said.

  We ended up all walking beside the road that corkscrewed up the steep slope from Dreamland to the Boulevard. By the time we got there the rain clouds had moved on. I looked at the peacock sea and the violet sky. The tunnel where we’d sheltered from the rain with Albert Park was flyspeck-small and the rails were snail-silver. Further away still were the hazy outlines of the city, and warships in the docks. It had taken us roughly four hours to get to Dreamland, but I couldn’t help thinking it wouldn’t take very long in a tank or a plane, or even if you were a soldier who didn’t have arthritis in his leg, or a small boy on a suitcase to pull.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Max reminded us as we walked under the palm trees to where the road was blocked with lumps of concrete and barriers of red-and-white mesh. I didn’t like this place. It was too quiet. But the others went under the barrier and I had to follow them past the houses with neat white fences, striped blinds and shiny doorknockers, and past a big hotel where you couldn’t see in the windows because of the reflect
ions of sea and sky and us. I wanted to ask Billy where everyone had gone. Where were the people who owned the nice houses? Were they watching us, wondering which side we were on or if we had come to steal from them, or worse?

  Max walked in front of me with his hand in Billy’s. I didn’t want to be last, but the wheels of my suitcase made a noise if I walked fast. I almost wished for the sounds of war machines and bullets and bombs and shouting and matching black boots on the footpath. At least I could have breathed properly without worrying that someone would hear me. Instead, I walked slowly and breathed quietly and said nothing.

  There was no 7-Eleven store on the Boulevard, but further back we found a narrow street full of cafes and other shops. And there were people, soft-talking, soft-walking people, fluttering down the darkening street, in and out of doorways like velvet-winged moths. Some waited outside the shops while others went inside, or darted into the bakery or the shop with rows and rows of cakes in the window. We went into the fruit shop first. Most things were rotten, but we got apples and carrots, a few bananas and some bottled water. In the newsagency Billy found a whole box of batteries, a cigarette lighter and a packet of lollies, but all the cigarettes were gone. We packed everything in my suitcase, on top of the art books.

  Then Billy said, ‘We’ll have to get a move on. I’ll go to the cake shop and you boys see if you can find some paper for drawing on.’

  It was dark inside the butcher’s shop and I made Max wait outside while I ran back to get a loan of Billy’s torch. One of the shadow people was talking to him. He stopped when he saw me coming, but not before I heard him say something about a place Albert Park had mentioned, ‘No-Man’s-Land’. I made up my mind to ask Billy about it when he was in a good mood.

  ‘You’d better come in with me,’ I said to Max, ‘I’ll need someone to hold the torch.’ There was plenty of paper on the counter in the butcher’s shop. I rolled it up and was putting it in a plastic bag when Max wandered off. I heard him calling from the back of the shop. He shone the torch so I could see where he was. ‘Let’s see what’s in there.’ He was standing in front of a white door.