Or perhaps she would like a really sweet, fluffy sponge cake with thick passionfruit icing and cream and jam in the middle? She imagined the smell that wafts out of a bakery early in the morning – hot, sweet grain. It smelt like a hug.

  She shined the torch on the goat again, frowning. Someone must own it, and that person must be somewhere nearby. Shelby was willing to entertain the idea that the mystery person was a she. Ida could be a shaman, or priestess – like Rafiki in The Lion King, except a woman.

  The cushions may not have been for Lindsey at all. Perhaps it was the Rafiki woman's bed? Maybe she had gone off somewhere and would come back any minute? Shelby's heart started beating fast again at the thought. But Ida didn't sound like an evil name. It sounded like someone's nanna.

  Could Lindsey's grandmother live down here? she wondered. Nannas don't wear flannelette shirts with the sleeves ripped off – but then, they don't live by themselves in the scrub either. It didn't make any sense.

  Shelby inhaled deeply. That's weird. With all the thoughts of food, she actually could smell bread baking. The flames were waning a little and so she stopped swinging the torch around long enough to throw a few more logs on. She could see the camp oven still half buried in the fire. As she stood over it she thought the bread smells were coming from inside.

  Shelby picked up a long stick and hooked it under the handle. She was just about to lift it out when she heard a voice – a man's voice.

  'Don't touch it!'

  'Ahh!' she shouted in surprise. Shelby let go of the stick she'd been using and it clattered to the ground. She swung the torch around. She saw a figure in the gloom behind the water tank.

  'Get back!' she shouted. 'I have a . . . a weapon!'

  'Nonsense!' he shouted back. 'You've got a belly ache and a case of the heebie-jeebies!'

  He stepped out from behind the water tank. Shelby saw an old man wearing a faded red tracksuit that zipped up at the front and a black beanie. He had a short white beard.

  'Santa!' she whispered, and then felt embarrassed.

  He started to walk towards the fire. Shelby backed away, shining the torch on his face. She stood protectively over Lindsey. 'Don't come any closer. I know kung fu.'

  The man held his hand up, blocking the glare from his eyes. 'Kung fu schmu. Get that thing out of my face.' He kept walking. Shelby's hands were shaking. She would clock him on the head with the torch if she had to.

  He squatted down over the campfire and moved the coals about with the stick Shelby had been using.

  'I should've waited until the coals were thick and hot. I kept waiting for you to go and you never left, so I put this together in a hurry. It will be all burnt and ruined and horrible on the outside, but the inside should be all right.'

  'My friend is hurt,' she said. 'I need to get her to the hospital.'

  'All in good time,' he replied.

  'Who are you?' she asked.

  'Never mind that. I know who you are. Another busybody come down here interfering. This young lady promised me you'd be in and out of here in ten minutes.' He nodded towards Lindsey. 'It's been the longest ten minutes of my life!'

  The man had wild scraggly eyebrows, knitted together over bright blue eyes rimmed with red. Shelby had been taught about Stranger Danger at school, but none of that had really prepared her for being stuck in a ravine with a scruffy Santa look-alike.

  Lindsey shifted. She wheezed.

  'It moves!' he said, shuffling around the fire to where Lindsey was lying.

  'This is my friend,' Shelby said. 'She fell.'

  'I think I've broken something,' Lindsey whispered.

  He hunkered down over Lindsey and gently pulled the neck of her tee-shirt down, exposing her shoulder. Shelby gripped the torch tightly, ready to whack him over the head with it, but Lindsey didn't seem to be afraid.

  'Yep. You've broke your collarbone, silly twit,' he said. 'It hurts, doesn't it?'

  Lindsey nodded. 'And my ankle.'

  He shifted his weight backwards and gently took her foot in his hand. He manipulated the joint for a moment. 'That's just a sprain. You'll be up and about in a couple of days. The collarbone, though – that's going to be long and painful.'

  'Great,' Lindsey huffed.

  'You two know each other!' Shelby said.

  'No,' they said in unison.

  'Don't want to either, he's a grump,' Lindsey added.

  'Only when you're annoying,' he retorted.

  'What are you doing down here?' Shelby asked.

  'That's not your business,' the man snapped. 'She always asks silly questions,' he said to Lindsey.

  Shelby wasn't sure what to do. She felt like an outsider, as though she had walked into a church in the middle of a sermon, or into a classroom when the lesson had already started. She decided that for now it was probably best just to go along with it and hope that the situation would become clear.

  'All questions are silly – and dishonest too,' he continued. 'People only ever ask a question to confirm or refute a judgement they have already made,' he answered, waggling his finger. 'Statements are much more sensible.'

  'But you asked a question,' she retorted.

  'I did not!' he protested. 'I've never asked a question in my life!'

  'Yes, you did. Before, you said, "It hurts, doesn't it?"'

  He blinked. 'That's a rhetorical question. It doesn't count.'

  Shelby shook her head. 'I think you make up the rules to suit yourself.'

  'There! A statement. Much better,' he said, grinning. His face crinkled like a scrunched-up paper bag and Shelby noticed he had a big space between his two front teeth.

  'In the cabin there's a first aid kit in the cupboard under the sink. There are three enamel mugs in there that you can bring back as well,' he instructed.

  Shelby didn't want to leave Lindsey alone with him – not until she was sure that Lindsey would be safe.

  'Why don't you do it?' she asked.

  He gave her a stern look like a school principal, and she felt herself shrinking away from it.

  'Because you're closer and you have the torch,' he replied.

  Lindsey didn't look scared by the old man and so Shelby jogged back to the doll's house. She had thought that the door for the cupboard under the sink was fake, but after she tugged at the handle for a while the door swung outwards. There were two shelves. On the bottom shelf there were more supplies – flour, dishwashing detergent, golden syrup, powdered milk, a few bottles of olive oil and more cans. Shelby pushed the goods aside and found a small tin with a cross marked on the top with green electrical tape.

  On the top shelf was a hotch-potch of crockery, cutlery and a few pots and pans. She grabbed three of the mugs, looping their handles through her finger, and headed back to the fire.

  The old man was holding Lindsey's heel in the palm of his hand. They had managed to get her gumboot off and were now battling with a sock. Every time he tried to draw it back a centimetre Lindsey grumbled.

  'You have to be a brave girl,' he said to her. 'We need to get a bandage on this or it will swell up like a balloon, and all the kids at school will call you Lindsey-Monster-Foot. You don't want that to happen.'

  Lindsey started to laugh, but she was holding her breath with the pain and so she sounded like Eddie Murphy.

  The old man pinched the toe of the sock and pulled it off her foot. Lindsey winced.

  He held out his hand and Shelby passed him a bandage from inside the first aid kit. He began to wind it tightly around Lindsey's ankle. Shelby sat down on the log, holding up the torch so that he could see what he was doing.

  'I need to get her to a doctor,' she said. 'We need to get home. Our parents will be really worried.'

  The man frowned as he wrapped. 'You've never had a broken collarbone, so you don't understand. We don't need to get Lindsey to a doctor, we need to get a doctor to Lindsey. First we need to make her comfortable and then we're going to talk.' He pointed to the first aid tin at Shelby's feet. 'There should be some paracetamol in there.'

  Shelby raked through the contents of the tin until she found the foil-backed row of pills. She looked at them suspiciously, but Lindsey held out her hand.

  'Gimme,' she croaked.

  Shelby handed them to her friend and watched as she dry-swallowed two of them.

  The old man reached the end of the bandage and tied it off with a clip.

  'You need to keep this leg raised, young lady.' He turned to Shelby. 'Hop off that log and roll it over here.'

  Shelby pushed the log until it was in position under Lindsey's foot and then she sat down cross-legged on the edge of the lounge cushion.

  The old man walked over to the chopping block and rolled it to the opposite side of the fire from the two girls. He sat down, holding his hands towards the heat. The fire cast a glow on his wrinkled face – orange in the light and purple where the folds of his skin formed a shadow. He poked the fire with a stick and sucked at his teeth. Shelby thought he looked like an old jackeroo.

  'How do we get out of here? How are we going to get a doctor?' she asked him.

  He held up his hand, silencing her. 'I'm thinking about it. Lindsey's fine for now.'

  Shelby's stomach made a long gurgling sound. She put her hand over it, embarrassed.

  'You're hungry,' he said.

  Shelby nodded.

  'We'll have a cup of tea. My damper will be ready in a little while and if you're good I'll let you have some. If you're not I'll chase you around with a stick until you get off my property.'

  'This is your property?' Shelby asked. 'Can somebody please tell me what's going on here?'

  21 Old Tales

  The old man set the billycan on the hot coals. He held a stick, and every now and then he poked at the fire, sending sparks spiralling up in the smoke.

  'This place was a movie set. It was built, or should I say half-built, in the early 1960s for a movie called As Luck Would Have It, which was one of those bonnet movies. It starred an up-and-coming young actress called Paula Something-or-other. She didn't go as far as she thought she would, but nobody else knew that at the time. Paula What's-her-face was a very handsome woman, but a no-talent pain in the behind.'

  He paused to poke at the fire for a moment.

  'As it happens there was another young lady on the set. She was somebody's assistant's assistant – not very important, but she had these legs.' He looked up at Shelby with a twinkle in his eye. 'Never mind. The significant point is that Paula Thinga-me-jig got grouchy about not getting the most attention on set and threw a great big wobbler. She pulled out, so then the people who'd put in all the money back-pedalled, and the producers ran a mile, and everybody backed away from the whole thing.'

  He took his beanie off and scratched under it. 'Which was a shame because it was the closest I ever got to glory. I'd planned to ride that thing all the way, but as it turned out I got six months' rent on a fifteen-acre plot, and that's all she wrote.'

  Shelby, feeling quite cooked on the front, turned to the side. 'Yes, but that was ages ago. What about now? Do you live here? How do you two know each other?'

  The old man sucked his teeth some more. 'It's not your business.'

  Lindsey croaked again. 'Tell her the way you told me, Frank.'

  His name is Frank, thought Shelby. Why didn't Lindsey explain any of this before? And who's Ida? She wondered if Ida might be Frank's wife. She would have to remember not to be startled if an old woman appeared out of the gloom.

  'No,' he replied. 'That story belongs to you.'

  Lindsey tilted her head to the side, looking at the old man. 'I got to hear Shelby's story. She should hear mine too.'

  'I'm tired of talking now,' he grumbled.

  'Well, I forgot my story. Tell me again.'

  He grunted, and used his stick to shift the billycan to a different part of the fire.

  'It was the summer of 1985. Dire Straits "Money for Nothing" was all you ever heard on the radio, and it was still four years before the legendary "Funky Cold Medina" by Tone-Loc.'

  'This isn't my story!' protested Lindsey.

  'Hush,' he said. 'Having clawed my way up through the ranks from repertory theatre to local musical productions, I was on my way to becoming a small-time telemovie director. I auditioned four young actors – Becky, Susie, Jason and, let me see now . . . Mikey – and brought them out here to make a western spoof, a dramatic, romantic comedy called Luck and Glass. Every one of us was happy and hopeful, but little did we know that there was a dark secret in this ravine that would shatter our dreams and even try to steal away our very lives.'

  'This is dumb,' complained Lindsey.

  'Quiet!' The old man frowned. 'Now you've ruined the mood. Give me that torch.' Shelby passed him the torch and he shone it under his chin to make his face shadowy.

  'On the first day of shooting, Becky, Susie and Jason gathered for a swimming scene at the edge of the pool over there. We looked for Davey – in his trailer, at the caterer's stand – but he was nowhere to be found.'

  'Who's Davey? I thought you said his name was Mikey,' said Shelby.

  'Same thing,' he said, waving his hand. 'Becky was the first in the water. She'd been in there swimming around while she waited for the camera crew to set up their shot when she started complaining that she felt something brushing against her leg.'

  Shelby rubbed the spot on her calf where she'd felt that too.

  'Becky was always kidding around. Total extrovert – you know how actors are – and so everybody laughed when she first started thrashing about in the water and screaming for help. Then she disappeared down into the water. We were all on the shore watching. It was eerily calm and then a few little bubbles came up to the surface. Then SPLASH!' The old man lifted off his seat, waving his arms. Shelby rocked back, startled.

  'Becky resurfaced. We could see her face frozen into an expression of horror.' He opened his mouth and rolled his eyeballs up. 'And as she floated towards us we could see the bloody line right across her stomach where she'd been bitten in half!'

  'This is a stupid story,' complained Lindsey.

  'I haven't even told you what happened to Mikey yet,' he said. He paused, waiting for them to urge him on. Shelby wanted to. She thought his story was scary – enjoyably scary – but she didn't want to seem like a little kid in front of Lindsey.

  'You're no fun,' Frank said, squatting next to the fire. He scraped the coals away from the edge of the camp oven and then lifted it onto the ground with his stick. He flicked off the lid and the delicious bread smells wafted out, making Shelby's mouth water. The top and one side was blackened, but the rest was a deep golden brown.

  'Not too bad,' he observed.

  Shelby thought it looked fantastic. She licked her lips.

  The goat wandered over, bleating, and poked her nose towards the pot. 'It's not for you, Ida,' Frank said, gently pushing her face away. The goat looked unhappy, but she dropped down, next to the old man, folding her limbs gracefully underneath her.

  'Ida is the goat?' asked Shelby, staring at Lindsey.

  'I knew you'd been here, but I didn't know if you'd met Frank. I figured if you knew Frank, you'd know Ida, but it seemed to me that you didn't know either of them,' Lindsey explained.

  'Why didn't you ask Frank if he knew me?' Shelby asked.

  Lindsey shook her head. 'You can never get a straight answer out of Frank.'

  The old man tucked his hand inside the sleeve of his jacket, grabbed the handle of the billycan and poured the tea into the enamel mugs.

  'Hold your horses, Hungry Helen,' Frank said as Shelby leaned forward. 'These are both going to be very hot. Why don't you run over and get us some golden syrup from the cabin?'

  Shelby noted that he had asked a question, but didn't raise it in case it made him cross. She didn't want to jeopardise her chances of getting some damper.

  Shelby rushed back to the doll's house and collected the syrup from under the sink. She grabbed the two plates and a butter knife as well.

  The damper was crisp and crunchy on the outside, soft and crumbly under the crust, and doughy in the middle. Shelby scraped the chunks of bread in the sweet syrup that had dripped onto her plate and licked her fingers. She thought it was the best thing she had ever tasted. Even the burnt bits were good.

  'Thish ish fantashtic,' she said through a mouthful.

  The old man raised an eyebrow. 'It's not my best work.'

  Lindsey had the plate high on her chest, feeling for the damper fragments and then putting them in her mouth carefully. 'It's pretty good,' she said. 'But it would be better if we could eat it while hearing a story.'

  'All right,' the old man said, brushing the crumbs from his palms. He stretched his legs out towards the fire and linked his fingers together between his knees. 'But only because you're all broken.'

  22 Lindsey's Story

  'The year was 1976,' Frank began. 'Abba released three number one hits that year. Do you know what they were?'

  'Who did?' asked Shelby.

  'Never mind,' he answered. 'Happy Days was playing on prime time television, and Jaws was the big blockbuster that scared the pants off everybody. A long way from Hollywood, and despite the fact that culture-friendly Whitlam had been turfed out the previous year, a pretentious young art student managed to get funding from a kindly benefactor for an experimental movie project called Beginner's . . .' He paused to take a sip of his tea. 'Called Beginners. Having complete confidence in his own genius, he cast himself as director, producer, writer, costume designer and leading man, and set off in search of his own Yoko – a gorgeous, intelligent woman whom he intended to partner on and off screen. He imagined them both as internationally infamous Art Film darlings.'

  'What's a Yoko?' Shelby asked.

  'Look it up.' The old man smiled. 'He wanted to be rich enough to simultaneously renounce currency as a tool for oppressing the working classes, and hold the sorts of lavish parties that you're too young to hear about.'

 

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