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Salt River Times 2
'Well, I heard the captain swear,' she says. 'And we
went down Hobson's River backwards. Stern first. And
we should have been going up it, forwards. And down we
went, and down we went. It was all green fields down the
river then. All green, with trees. No one on shore knew
our engine had stopped. But they blew the whistle, and
they blew it. All the birds flew up, pelicans, and gulls and
cranes. They didn't like the noise.'
Then Mel didn't like the noise, because they had come
to the lights and got alongside the semi again. Same
driver got his elbows on the wheel, looking in front like a
dog. Noise in the tram like being in the engine. The lights
change, and the semi pulls away. The engine gets quieter.
The old woman is talking about engines. She wouldn't
know about engines, would she?
She knows a bit. 'They'd stopped,' she says. 'No more
go in them. That's why we drifted downstream. We got
up against a mud bank by Stony Creek, where the new
bridge is, and we all sat down. Couldn't help it, the boat
tipped up. The captain's tea came out of the window, cup
and pot and all, and slid down in the water. And there we
stuck. She got her bottom on the bank and we got ours on
the deck. And there we stopped. They came and pulled us
off before long, and back up to the wharf, and I didn't get
to school the rest of the week until they fixed it.'
'Did you get stuck in the mud a week?' says Kev. You
don't need a semi in your ear to help Kev get it wrong.
They got off the mud that day. But the old woman
doesn't mind he gets it wrong.
'I stayed home a week,' she says. 'On the farm, down
on Hope Street. The block where the Commonwealth
Bank is. That was our yard. You still go to school?'
'Got to,' says Kev.
'The last day I went,' says the old woman, 'I never got
there.'
'We're going to leave before that,' says Kev. 'Get on a
mud bank the day before, we will.'
'Your friend reminds me,' said the old woman, looking
at Joe.
'I never did it,' said Joe. 'I didn't.'
But the old woman hasn't said what he did, so it wasn't
wrong. She goes on about her last day. Mel shouts them
all tickets, just going up the park and play footy.
'It was foggy on the water,' she says. 'The air was cold
but the water was warm.'
'On the steamer?' says Mel.
'On the steamer,' she says. 'Same steamer, the Iramoo.
It was a paddle steamer. You could lean over the side and
see the wheels go round, and if you fell in you got made
into butter, that was the end. We got off the wharf and
out on the Salt River. The captain put a bit of bite in the
paddles because the tide was coming upstream and we
wanted to go down. There was a wind up the river too,
with the fog. I don't think the captain knew where he
was. But just as we came out of the fog there was a sailing
boat coming up straight for us, just along my side. I was
there looking at the water and the paddle, like a nong.'
Then she stopped. 'Will you ring the bell for me?' she
asks Kev.
'Yeah,' says Kev, and pulls the cord. The bell dings by
the driver and the tram stops. This time it gets ahead of
the semi, which has to wait back.
'I'll have to tell you the rest another time,' she says. 'I
get off here.'
Mel thinks, we shan't see her again, it's only been once
in a hundred years so far. If we want to know the end of
her time at school. 'We get off here, too,' he says. 'We got
to today.'
So they get off with her, and stand in the road until she
points in the direction of the pavement. Mrs Anghelidas
stays on the tram. Mel blows a big bubble of gum. He
knows there will be trouble soon, with Joe and Kev, when
they see they have got off before the park.
'There, boys, thank you,' says the old woman, setting
off for the pavement. The semi driver sits with his elbows
on the steering wheel and looks out above them all, like a
dog-faced baboon.
'What about your last day at school?' says Mel.
'I was really telling this boy,' says the old woman,
looking at Joe. 'The sailing boat, and you see it was a
Chinese one and perhaps they knew no better, came right along the side of the Iramoo, and ran right up under the
paddle-wheel and there was such a bump, and the wheel
stopped, and that was lucky, because the next thing I
knew I had fallen off the steamer and into the water.'
To be continued |
